Popfan

19 Oct 2024

Guess we're doing introductory posts again. Hi there, I'm Popfan! I play old Sega games, am reasonably good at bullet hells, compose music (sometimes), draw (rarely), aspire to be a polyglot, and lava lamps and vintage technology are my vibe. I also made a game that you should check out!

21 July

Idea for a birthday gift for my mom once I've gotten my VCR fixed: Record the entirety of my Y Plan Countdown tape to DVD so she can use it for her home workouts again.

21 July

I'll probably still need to get my hands on a new capture card for this one, too, if I don't want the quality to be even worse than it's already going to be.

19 July

My current fixation is a complete refactoring of my website's templating engine to lay the groundwork for more complex features, most notably conditional branching. Maybe I'm starting to veer into overengineering, but it's also kind of satisfying to see it all come together.

18 July

Tbh, Discord profile widgets related to showcasing games are kinda pointless for me because none of the games I play are actually in their database. Wake me up once they've got some Master System titles in there, at least.

18 July

I just don't play enough modern stuff. Never have, least of all these days.

I just got around to printing them out today! One of them will need some minor adjustments for subsequent batches, but other than that, I'm very happy with the results.

Popfan@gensakudan.com

That said, today I made some templates I plan on printing out in the future to use for game-related concepts. Yes, they're all branded, and yes, I know of a shop where I can get these printed for like 9 cents per page.

Of course, *when* I'm printing subsequent batches is another question altogether. For now, I've got 10 copies of each template to start me off with. Time will tell how long they'll last and which ones I end up using the most.

I feel like a good example of why console generations as a concept fall flat is because I end up needing to spend a lot of time counting up just to determine which particular "generation" a given console belongs to.

It's like: "PS3? Uhhh, the Mega Drive was 4th gen, then the Saturn/N64/PS1 were 5th gen, so that means the PS2 was 6th and that makes the PS3 7th." And it only gets worse the more recent the console is. I could've saved myself all those mental gymnastics by just saying "the PS3 era" or something.

It's kinda impressive just how many singers/bands/etc. that were ubiquitous in the 80s are still actively making music to this day, even if they have become completely irrelevant (judging by their lack of a place in the charts).

14 July

The VCR I ordered arrived today! Unfortunately it seems to have been damaged in transit. The tapes play back fine, but completely without sound, except for one. The seller suspects that the audio head fell out of alignment, so I'm gonna call up my trusted repair shop again.

11 July

I wanted to try out what it's like writing in a genkō yōshi, so I made a sample line or two on some scrap paper. Funny enough, the 8mm grids are a lot nicer to write in than the 10mm ones. Also tried out a new brush pen I bought myself today. I'll definitely need some practice with it, though.

Oh, I'm also planning on getting my hands on a VCR! Last weekend I went down into the basement and grabbed all the VHS tapes we still had in storage there. They're currently in my bookshelf, and I can't wait to have a way to play them back again.

I was directly inspired by design/concept excerpts from games of the 80s/90s, which also hashed out a lot of that kinda stuff on paper. Lately I've been wanting to take a more old-school, analog approach to things, even if it's not always practical to do so.

On my end, at least, I suppose I am finally getting some more breathing room. It's been helping me get my bearings so I can work on a self-care routine. Creative projects will likely be on hold for at least another week or two while I get *that* set up.

Kinda wish I had happier news to talk about, but it's been nothing but disappointment these days...

Make that another thing killed by AI. Holy shit, this stings, and I wish it were an out-of-season April Fool's joke... I found the project really educational to follow along with, so it's sad to see it end with only one game out of five fully decompiled.

ReC98@rec98.nmlgc.net

ReC98 will end after the next delivery. I don't have it in me to compete with vibecoders, especially when y'all cheer them on for instantly delivering what you've wanted all along. And if you aren't cheering yet, you soon will; they're only getting better and more numerous.

But on the other hand, I understand how demoralizing it must be to do this all by hand and with a human element, all while so many around you choose the easy, more prolific option that sacrifices quality. Not even ample financial compensation can really offset that in the long run.

Again, it's sad to see this project come to a premature end, but if you feel like it's for the better for the sake of your happiness, I respect your decision and am looking forward to any other project you may start tackling after this (if any). Thank you for the many years of deep dives.

ReC98@rec98.nmlgc.net

You say we'll soon be cheering, but I don't think I will. Though I couldn't quite wrap my head around most of your technical explanations, your uncompromising attention to detail and demands for 100% accuracy were always felt, and something no vibecoder in the world could ever replicate.

1 July

Recent news about Sony planning on going digital-only by 2028 makes me think that that kind of trend is another thing I could potentially write a blog post about sometime. I just don't know if it'd have anything to add other than "enshittification bad, everything sucks, retvrn to retro gaming"...

1 July

What *is* there even to say? We all know it's a bad idea. Just another scummy business practice as big corporations continue what's essentially a war on ownership. I think the only way I *could* justify a post like that is with some kind of silver lining or beacon of hope.

1 July

Thinking about how Peri Fractic has the potential to be the next Tommy Tallarico (in the "resurrects a dead brand and then runs it into the ground again" way).

30 June

God, I just had the wildest idea: If I had a VCR and some blank tapes, I could use that to record gameplay in a period-accurate authentic way. Granted, I'd probably still need a capture card to get those recordings digitzed onto my PC, and I'm pretty sure my Dazzle is already on its last legs...

30 June

Wonder if there's still any good-quality capture cards with composite input manufactured to this day so I don't have to rely on oldstock that may or may not already be falling victim to entropy.

Snail Maze

SEGA City@segacity.bsky.social

What game was built-in to your SEGA Master System?

All the spam emails I'm getting from scammers pretending to be specifically Amazon are pretty funny when you consider that I've purchased something through Amazon all of *once* over the past 2+ years...

This deluge has been going on for months now and is starting to get a little stale. If you're gonna be inundating me with spam emails, at least get a new gimmick for me to not fall for.

After half a year, I finally finished this book during a flight back home... and I gotta admit I'm a little disappointed. To start with, the writing is extremely sloppy. Missing commas, semicolons used in place of proper colons, names of brands and people getting misspelled all the time... (1/6)

Popfan@gensakudan.com

Couldn't resist, so I got my own copy, which finally arrived in the mail yesterday! I haven't gotten around to opening it up yet, but I'm excited to give it a read as soon as I can.

I *wanted* to like the book, but it's really not giving me a lot of reasons to. The factual inaccuracies for parts of Sega's history that I *am* well-versed in don't inspire confidence for the parts I'm less familiar with. Unfortunately, I can't recommend it. (6/6

Oh, here's another gripe: The usage of relative timestamps (e.g. "x years ago") in a book I just had to double-check to confirm was written in 2025. Just give the actual date, even if it's vague. (7/6)

These speedrun world record bots are weird. They're all like "BRAND NEW RUN RECORD VERIFIED!!!"... and the run itself has been up on the leaderboards for like the past two years now.

Popfan@gensakudan.com

Couldn't resist, so I got my own copy, which finally arrived in the mail yesterday! I haven't gotten around to opening it up yet, but I'm excited to give it a read as soon as I can.

There were also a slew of factual inaccuracies, which I'd have to skim through the book again to list, and the worst crime? Zero mention of Segata Sanshiro in the coverage of the Saturn's marketing campaign in Japan! None! (4/6)

I'm honestly at a loss for what this book's target audience is meant to be. It barely lists anything that a diehard Sega fan wouldn't already know, and non-fans probably wouldn't care enough to put this in their shelves. (5/6)

Popfan@gensakudan.com

Couldn't resist, so I got my own copy, which finally arrived in the mail yesterday! I haven't gotten around to opening it up yet, but I'm excited to give it a read as soon as I can.

I originally got this book when the author assured me that it also covers Sega's early history, including the SG-1000, but while it did do that, the 8-bit era was barely a few pages while the Mega Drive got like three whole chapters dedicated to just it. (2/6)

The lopsidedness extends to the coverage of global events, too: Pretty much only Japan and the anglosphere got any sort of attention. Brazil, the rest of Europe and other parts of the world were barely more than a footnote when they did get brought up. (3/6)

Kinda wish I found more images/videos documenting how games were developed back in the day. I genuinely wonder how they did it without the conveniences that homebrew devs have today.

@johnandersen.bsky.social

What software did they use to write and compile code? How did they make the graphics and music (not to mention digitized sounds)? What kind of setup did they have to test it all, and how did they go about debugging their code?

Popfan reposted

John Andersen

COMPILE development staff (1989). In the second picture is Katsuji Suenaga (planning, map design on Golvellius: Valley of Doom for SEGA Master System) and Koji Mizuta programmer on Ghostbusters for SEGA Genesis and designer/programmer of Gun-Nac for the NES. Via: MSX・FAN 1989-09.

N E E D

KΛMΛ 🌸🕹️🏳️‍⚧️🎃@tamarakama.bsky.social

@mjfouldes.bsky.social I thought of you when I saw this mat because it's SEGA Master System themed.. 😅💜 Sega Door Mat Entrance Doormat Non-slip Washable Carpet a.aliexpress.com/_mKaedJ5

20 June

Advertise your Bluesky account with a Simpsons GIF. Me with all my weird fixations and obsessions that almost nobody else shares:

This post is unavailable.

20 June

Feel like the 90s (and, to some extent, the late (?) 80s) were full of just slapping gratuitous Japanese writing everywhere for the aesthetic. Wonder if Blade Runner is to thank for that...

Old UK Catalogues@oldukcatalogues.bsky.social

1993: Video Games and Arcade from SEGA (+Cool Spot)

13 June

There's something kinda magical about talking to someone through emails as opposed to instant messaging.

gm4gamescd.quadolorgames.comGM4 Games CD ArchiveA collection of games from the Game Maker 4 Games CD.

18 June

I kinda wanna write letters, too, but I don't know the home address of anyone I'd actually want to write one to.

Popfan reposted

M.S.T.O.P.

@mstop4.bsky.social

17 June

I made a website to search and download games from the Game Maker 4 Games CD: gm4gamescd.quadolorgames.com I uploaded the CD to the Internet Archive a few years ago to help preserve it, but browsing it and trying to play some of the games was a hassle, so I decided to fix that. (1/4) #GameMaker

11 June

Been getting quite a bit into Master System Light Phaser games lately. It's something I don't have much practice with, so I've been playing a lot of Marksman Shooting/Trap Shooting/Safari Hunt to develop a feel for it.