Debugging Nintendo games

Have you ever played a video game and wondered what rules you could bend? What's behind the flagpole in Super Mario Bros, can you skip a dungeon in Legend of Zelda or beat the BubbleMan with his own gun?

Sometimes the game authors themselves leave cheat codes that implement interesting game rules like flying, all weapons etc. Game genie codes and glitches like cartrigde tilting can also provide a ton of fun. But what if the game you like has no exotic codes, and the only game genie codes you can find online give you infinite ammo? You break the game yourself, of course!

Felix, where did you steal that balloon in the first level?!

Read on to see how to create new rules yourself in classic 8-bit Nintendo games.

Running 'Doom' on a Canon printer

I stumbled upon this interesting article about decrypting firmware of Canon Pixma printers.

http://www.contextis.co.uk/resources/blog/hacking-canon-pixma-printers-doomed-encryption/

Joypad Mod / Split Screen for Minecraft 1.7.10

Thank to Minecraft Forums user bjbinc Joypad Mod is updated to 1.7.10. Get it while it's hot! :)

Pac-Man - level 256

Ever wondered about the infamous level 256 of Pac-Man? Don Hodges has an in-depth explanation of the phenomenon, together with code examples and a patch for fixing it. Read on.

DOOM on ZPU

I stumbled upon this fantastic article about a guy porting DOOM game to Zylin AS ZPU. ZPU is a fascinating concept - it's an open source, lightweight CPU implemented on top of FPGA. The article itself explains a bit the ZPU architecture, makes some insights into workings of the DOOM engine and discusses performance considerations and limitations with the current port. Nice stuff.

Check the full article.

New JoypadMod Version 0.1

Thanks to hard work of ahickey and our contributors, the new version of the joypad mod for Minecraft is out, and it is ambiguously versioned as 0.1, because frankly - why not :)

It is not to be confused with the original Forge-less joypad mod v0.1 - which was never released ;-)

This new version contains the following improments over the previous release:

Joypad/Split Screen mod for Forge - v0.0952

It's time for new round of improvements for Joypad Mod for Forge. New version 0.0952 contains a lot of improvements that should make using controller much more enjoyable. Here's the full changelog:

• Map any key to a joypad button - great for mods!
• Axis calibration menu - no more spinning in circles!
• New and improved controller button options menu
• Container scrolling up/down via buttons
• Improved sensitivity options in menu
• Allow choosing of any connected controller even if it doesn't meet input requirements
• All joypad input will go through the keyboard / mouse buffer for full compatibility with mods
• Lots of minor tweaks for a better in game experience
• .minecraft\config\JoypadSplitscreenMod.cfg updates:
• Make logging verbosity an option
• Share joypad settings across all users (thanks stcrowe!)

As always, you can get the newest version from the mod page.