Weasel @wildweasel@computerfairi.es

Today I learned that the first Super Mario Bros. romhack was released not in the 2000s, or the 1990s, but in 1987—two years after the game's original release. It was called "Tonkachi Mario". It wasn't a modified EEPROM in a custom cartridge, it was a hacked version of the Famicom Disk System port of Super Mario Bros. Being stored on magnetic media made it a lot easier to edit.

But wait, the Famicom Disk System used custom proprietary disks, how are you going to edit those?

It turns out that Tonkachi Mario was actually the bundled demo that came with Tonkachi Editor, which was an unlicensed third-party tool that was basically a primitive hex editor for Famicom Disk System disks, operated by the regular Famicom controller.

The Famicom Disk System came out in 1986, so within a year of it's release, somebody reverse-engineered the drive, reverse-engineered the Famicom, wrote a toolchain to make their own custom programs, wrote a hex-editor, reverse-engineered Super Mario Bros. and made their own custom version. Oh, and Tonkachi Mario requires speedrunning tricks like glitching through walls to complete, so the creator had to have those skills too.

I wouldn't be surprised at somebody doing that *today* now that we have resources like the NESDev wiki and YouTube videos about how to get good at speedrunning tricks. But in 1987? Wow.

https://glitchcat7.com/the-complete-history-of-kaizo-mario/

#retrogaming #romhacking #homebrew

stuffed a #raspberrypi #pico #w inside a #toy #guitar and taught it #midi

The Thing That Should Not Be - Brad Matter

Introducing Teller!
Silent partner to Penn Jillette in their Magical Duo, Teller is an accomplished talent himself. Performer, author, master magician and published in Nature, but also one of the co-architects of Desert Bus! Join us in giving him the hero's welcome he deserves!

Crazy graphic of the day.

Wage theft greatly eclipses all other forms of theft value: https://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2018/09/wage-theft-vs-other-forms-of-theft-in-the-u-s/

Just bought a typewriter.

You can tell it's old because it's got neofetch on it.

dick tracy, print ad, excerpt (1991) https://www.mobygames.com/game/22129/dick-tracy/promo/group-63088/image-789051/

Why does this sound ominous and/or horny

When I die please mix my ashes with concrete, then turn me into a brick and throw me at an Amazon Warehouse

It's good that Desert Bus is on the immediate horizon, because if there's anything we need now, it's an overwhelming demonstration that good persists. For Hope indeed.

https://desertbus.org

USA: oouuuhhh you can't put ketchup on your hot dog you're supposed to have it with only mustard you're not a child anymore

Brazil: segura minha caipirinha

you know, to ease myself from absorbing too much uspol stress I'm gonna watch the Robair Clip Tape

Literally 6 hours of random game show stuff, recorded by Robair Mackey, probably one of the original game show superfans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-CBDU_wWg

what, it helps me think

#Caturday

One of the things I miss most from #FreeBSD when I'm on Linux is being able to hit ^T to get a status line showing what a long-running process is up to. Pretty much everything in base seems to emit a useful line about what it's working on (e.g. cp will tell you the file/percentage it's up to) and the system will add output with load and task state/times.

In the screenshot, I hit ^T after the “daily" line, while tarsnap was working away quietly to itself. Works on macOS too, generally.