Okay, up next I have an interview with SmokeMonster the guy that does all
those amazing ROM packs for the different rom carts available, and you
know I've said many times that my favorite part of the round-up is doing
the interviews because sometimes I get to finally, you know, meet over Skype
people that I've been working online with for a long time, and other times I
get to interview people that I'm just gigantic fans of their work, and this is
one of the many times that Mike counts is both. I'm a huge fan of his work and I
have been talking to him for a long time, so it was great to finally meet him on
camera. And, you know I don't think I stressed the fact in the interview how
appreciative all of us should be for those because when my cousin Scott and I
first got our rom carts it was hours of filtering through finding what worked
and didn't, figuring out what we wanted on our cards, and just, you know, now with
these you just download them and that's it. It even has all the setup files for
the EverDrives on them. So just such a huge contribution to the community and
I'm so appreciative of it. I wanted the interview to be fun as usual
and not just me kissing his ass for the whole time so I'll do it now:
Thank you again for all your work. And as always though it's always
hard to talk about him. His name's Mike. Online name is SmokeMonster
and that's pretty much all I'm comfortable saying because I'm not sure
about the legalities of problems you know. For the most part I don't think it
matters, I just want to make sure that nobody gets in
trouble. And as always if you're looking to find his rom packs just Google: "SmokeMonster Rom Packs"
and it's like the first thing that comes up. The
interview was a ton of fun. I got a little off-topic talking about modding
for a while, but hey the same 'ol as usual. A lot of fun; I enjoyed it, thanks again
to Mike for doing it and I will see you guys next week.
Hey guys, I'm here with SmokeMonster. How you doing man? I'm good, how are you?
Pretty good! Yeah, thanks for coming on. I've been using your rom pack since I
first discovered them. And the first time I
downloaded it and I checked it out, I called my cousin Scott immediately I was
like, dude you gotta try this rom pack. And he goes, ahh no I've already
spent hours doing mine and I have it all the way I want it. And he kind of blew it
off. And maybe a couple months later I borrowed his EverDrive and I put
your pack on it and he got back to me and went like oh wow this thing really
is awesome. Like so I mean I was dying to know: how did you get started and how
long did that stuff take you? I started it maybe I think about two and a half
years ago and it just started out as "this was my everdrive setup" and I shared
it with someone and they liked it. I
released the first one at theisozone and lots of people liked using
it. Then I started looking more into ROM sources and what
kind of release groups were out there-- who does the best work--and I decided
just to make it sort of the standard set. So instead of having to mess
around with a lot of these direct download sites that people use.You know
the roms are out there yeah that's something today we really need to
acknowledge and it's it's kind of like do you give the smack addicts you know
clean utensils to use or do you give them something that's safe so with my
set up so I'm sort of giving them the best setup that there is so you don't
have to mess around with a lot of those kind of low-quality rounds yeah and you
know those websites are still handy on the occasion where I'm you know away
from my computer I just need one ROM but overall I mean I think since I started
using yours there's been maybe one or two occasions where I found a ROM that
wasn't in your pack and then I think that both of those occasions it's
because then you usually send them to me yeah yeah they're brand new and then I
just email them to you but uh no they all based off of existing
ROM sets and reorganised so they all like the no intro said or something like
yeah yeah they're the majority so the original goal was just to have every
official wrong and so I wanted to have the best source I started out using I
think the version 1.0 was the good sets and those are really good sets but
they're more aimed towards having content so they want to have everything
whereas I go with no intro now for the main roms just because they're focused
on just having all of the official roms I think for the most part and perfect
dumps right so then so the majority of the roms are from the latest no intro
sets and then I spice it up with you know the game series collections and the
color restorations all that kind of fun stuff hacks translations and a lot of
that comes from the good set and from just being on forums and seeing what's
out there in the news you send me a lot of interesting stuff that comes after I
do yeah that's a lot of people don't realize how much help I get and most of
it lately has been coming from you just keeping me up to date with the news on
what's out there I've been sort of moving for the last five or six months
so I'm kind of out of touch yeah you know at first I thought I was hoping I
wasn't annoying me with all those emails but it is kind of easier for me because
I'm you know I'm already cruising these on a daily basis so every time I find
one it's really easy for me just to pop it right over to you knowing that you
know what I have like a folder I'd dump them all in like you know not in the ROM
set yeah but it just makes my life easier just knowing that there's already
a repository for them so I'm glad glad you're not annoyed with all the emails
with all the stuff I keep sending no I love it I'm trying trying since the
beginning to make it more collaborative it's it makes it easier for me and it's
kind of every time that you put something into it you know there's if I
if I added up all the people using it from the original sets and the new said
I think there's about 120 thousand downloads for it and that's not
including what I can't track from the ISO zoner originally so we had I know
there's about 30,000 people just in the first year who looked at the thread
there and now we've got about 83,000 it the new site and so yeah I feel like
it's kind of my thing you know it's it's a duty and every hour that I put into it
is an hour that somebody else gets out of it and every time somebody like you
sends me you've been sending me these gamegear Decimus conversions those are
incredible yes we're really awesome yeah I mean the
amount of time you save people and it's like you know it cuz I come from both
sides of this I'm just the nerd that loves playing the games and that you
save guys like you know on that side of it a ton of time but also the guys that
are working on a lot of these things even the guys that you know they're
working on the game gear to SMS conversions and stuff like that you know
now you have a place where you know hey this ROM is going to work on my
everdrive or you know my power pack so I'll use this and because there are so
many bad dumps out there and I just I never I guess I never really grasped how
these games got dumped did you ever get into the history of how some of these
rom files they hit the internet and everything you know if you look back
it's it's really interesting I mean originally they were using those tools
that you saw in the back of Nintendo power or whatever it was the the video
game magazines back in the day of the distance and a lot of the roms that are
out there now are still sourced from those or they're you know they were
dumped by someone way back when and then somebody imported it into their emulator
and it added a head or removed a header and then somebody else didn't they just
they get changed somewhat they have these each each ROM that's out there has
a life history and that's that's not a good thing for us because we want it
just to be whatever the the perfect dump was bit for bit exact and then that's
what we want right and so you go to these download sites and you know it
looks it could be a no intro ROM it could be a good set like the name might
match but unless you're using a CRC tool to check it out or the md5 tag you're
not gonna know and most people don't want to do that for you know 5,000 roms
or whatever right right so that was a big push was just I get everything
direct from the latest pack released by no intro so yeah that's it's a good
resource you ever actually played with one of the floppy drive ROM dumpers
before no I've never used one of those I've never even seen one in person
obviously just like you said I mean I've seen him in the back of some magazines
and it was kind of mind-blowing I remember I mean when we were kids me and
my cousin's my going so if I buy this and I get a
floppy drive I can get it like but isn't it gonna take forever to load off the
floppy and what if like and that's all we used to do back then with computer
games yeah trade up get us back and forth with whatever whoever bought the
latest game and then they'd copy it over to their to a floppy for you
right and then I as a kid I didn't know the difference between you know we're
talking nine ten years old between megabits and megabytes those 32 Meg
games megabit games the one so I need 32 floppy drives to hold this one game on
there something and it's just I didn't get it it's kind of funny I wonder if
anybody has one you know I'd love to at least see a short video of it or maybe
even mess around with it if they're in the New York area cuz I'd love to
finally see what it is that we were staring at the one thing I did get to
see in person was a converter that let you play Nintendo games on a Super
Nintendo and it was at some random game shop in old sabor Connecticut and it
didn't really work it kind of blew my mind because I saw those in the
magazines for like more than definitely more than the cost of a Nintendo and it
was and then didn't even really work right mm-hmm
kind of funny yeah yeah that's I'm really big into the hardware to like you
or I'm gonna have a good collection of games mm-hmm a little quirky things like
that are really interesting to see I consider myself more collector Hardware
though I'm gonna maybe have two or three hundred games in my collection total I'm
not a hardcore collector like a lot of youtubers or what yeah yeah you know I
got really into collecting my favorite games and then the things that I always
wanted but never could find like all the the 3d Master System games I loved the
fact that I owned those just for the hell of it I still play all the only the
roms just because especially now that I moved there's no room to keep a
collection the game cartridges but the hardware is still pretty important to me
because the game cartridges themselves are in my opinion great collectors items
and certain games I would love to play only on the original cartridge just for
the hell of it but I mean you could reproduce those you could find a good
dump of a ROM and burn it on to another actual chip and not you not even use a
rum cart but the original hardware the actual consoles themselves the
controllers that's the thing that you can't really replicate that experience
you know yeah that's what I've been really been into especially you know the
main focus of the site is keeping that experience alive been improving it so
yeah your site's I think using your site I was just checking back through my
email the other day I put in retro RGB because we go back and forth all the
time and I realized I sent you some emails back in 2013
oh yeah not as a smoke monster but just as me and I was asking you questions
about I think it was when you'd put up the new instructions on the one ship
Super Nintendo RGB mods yeah which I had and I did and I was having sync issues
which back then I didn't know what is doing nowadays I know exactly what it
was just reading my email Mike I remember when I fixed that because I did
connect sync line inside of it or something I figured it out at some point
it's funny because I think the site launched in 2012 I want to say maybe
maybe just earlier than that cuz it was private for a while it was just Scott
and I were going back and forth on it and I really I mean I was blown away and
how many people started using it at first then I don't want to say I didn't
take it seriously because I always took it seriously but I didn't I think what I
didn't grasp was how many people from around the world would use the guides
the English isn't their first language so the back I saved every picture cuz I
had looked back at some of my original mods and I'm just going oh my god that's
so embarrassing I can't believe I posted that picture because it was something
you know the the text would say something like hey this was my first try
so it's a bad shot but here you know use this to to make it good and you know it
was a really dumb thing to do because a lot of people were I see pictures you
know people were selling on eBay consoles that were modded the same way
with like a glob of glue holding something down it just oh god that's
terrible so I just I constantly keep trying to improve it and make it better
but occasionally I stumble across something from you know year 1 or pre
launch and just go what the hell was I thinking
yeah that's how that goes though you know I don't like look I don't like
opening up my first consoles that I'm out of either but I think you go back
through through the years and fix the things you did and you've made the
improvements and your sight I mean as far as I know that's what everybody
points to you know like if you've got a Super Nintendo and you want RGB mod it
people are linking straight to your site and you show the different options that
are out there and the comparisons well in the future goal now is to make it a
community effort so I am working on it's just the first stages but I got a couple
people offering to help but I want to make it more of a Wikipedia style so
that people could contribute their own guides because there's so many guys that
do amazing work that don't have the time to put up their site or even really to
write a guide in a forum so you know if somebody dumps a bunch of pictures and
some basic descriptions I could go back in and rewrite it as a full guide and I
just I want to make it for everybody and eventually hopefully put it up for
public domain because you know I don't want to sound morbid and everything but
nobody lives forever so but these websites can so I just I
really I'm glad people are liking it but I want to make it for everybody now and
I also want to try to find ways to get away to get around some of the legal
issues because I'd love to make everything kind of open-source I guess
is the right term to say because imagine if there was um you know obviously with
moderators to make sure nobody messes with it but if you could have your rom
packs in a way where it was open directories so people could add stuff
and then just like Wikipedia leave a description of why they added it and
then rather than hunt all these things down you could just be the moderator and
go okay you know new game gear or sms patch let me fire it up yep it works
great okay hit submit and add it you know it's a yeah there would be more
everybody mm-hmm come on yeah it's probably gonna take I mean at this point
it'll probably take a year before I even get something where people could try it
and see if they liked it so the end goal is to make it four for everybody yeah
that would be great then you're right I mean I watch your
news every week there's a new RGB mod or VGA mod for something coming out that's
taking a different angle at getting to the same results yeah yeah you know I
would immediately post the the ROM packs on
mine but the legal issues really bugged me because it's like you know it's not
like there's any developers out there making these cartridges and there
actually are on a small scale but we all in the community kind of support those
people now anyway but it's not like you know you're a
little startup trying to make a Genesis cartridge and it's 99 excuse me it's
1992 you know and people the only people making money off of these things are the
people reselling them on newer consoles which we either don't care about or
we're gonna buy anyway you know I think I bought Sonic CD on an Apple TV just
for the hell of it I wanted to see what it felt like in 16 by 9 and they
actually did a great job but I'm always gonna own Sonic CD for my you know Sega
CD so I wish I wish the legal issues weren't as it's weird with that because
you never know when you're gonna get hit with the takedown request yeah I always
wonder about that I mean in some respects it's it's almost found art at
this point there's so much but out there and yeah we put as a community like in
in my packs I don't allow any any content that's actively sold by the
original creator that's sort of my role so yeah a couple years ago I think you
had one in and you didn't realize people still sold it yeah I took it right out
so yes the there was a sigh which site it was but they posted their public
domain stuff all the time in sort of a like a FTP folder and so I would check
in there every six months or something just grabbed everything and they
actually put one of their games in there and I didn't realize it and they
contacted me and I took it out about three seconds after the pack was posted
that's the only time that's ever happened and yeah that is a bit that's
my big fear I'm always I'm I'll pull things just to be safe sometimes but I
don't want to hurt anybody's income but yeah I mean the people using ever drives
are the biggest collectors there are it's it's the gateway to video games at
this point I mean if right here a new collector and you've got a Nintendo and
the first thing you bought it I mean it's pretty much the first thing you buy
is a never drive you know and that's how you figure out what I'm gonna buy you
know do I want this game or that game do I enjoy it and which what are the new
favorites like we have our favorites I'm thinking about people who
are just picking up a Nintendo like what are they gonna like you know and what
are they gonna put in their collection because for for me you know the most
nostalgic games are like ducktales or Mega Man or something like that you know
but I wonder what reasons they're gonna be into yeah for me playing Mega Man 1
was the thing for me because I don't know but where did you grow up anyway I
was in central Illinois central Illinois so I was in Connecticut maybe two hours
outside of New York City and you could not find Mega Man 1 anywhere I saw a
Mega Man 2 and I think I owned that one and I love the game but there's nowhere
I could find Mega Man 1 all through my childhood and then when I finally got
you know ever drives and RGB mounted nest playing that one kind of blew my
mind it became like a new a new favorite I loved it so it's fun there to
experience it but a lot of the homebrew to like I didn't realize how how many
amazing hacks and just or homebrews from scratch games were out there until I got
never drive and I kind of wish they had like a title screen that says you know
hey this problem this is a rom of a homebrew game if you'd like to buy a lot
of cartridge go to this website you know I think because there's there's a lot
that aren't that great but there's a few that I played that if we're available on
a cartridge even if I already beat it I would totally buy it just just to
support guys yeah I love that kind of stuff too I try to keep up with that as
much as I can do you have any favorite rom hacks that you played for any of the
systems hacks or I let most of what I do lately has been just playing
translations or hacks and things I don't know I know I wasn't into it that much
and back in the day but that there are some very high-quality hex PI runs doing
excellent work I think talked about him before m/sec sort of
showed up some of his footage I'll go back but yeah he does color restorations
on games that she loved already and say you've got a Genesis and he's taking it
and giving it these beautiful color palettes and getting it as close to the
arcade as or as possible and just making these improvements across the board and
those are those are what I really like and you see
that on a bunch of systems you'll see improvement hacks those are I just think
they're kind of cool they take a game that's already great and they'll fix
some things or they'll fix some colors that were off or something like that yet
know that that stuff I think that's just amazing because there was what the
Castlevania - for NASA where they fixed all the bad translations and there was a
Link's Awakening hack where it was just one or two very small things but they
were kind of I guess broken on the original so when you play those you're
essentially playing a better version of the original game so you know it was
really impressive yeah yeah I was just spent just the other day I spent a
couple hours trying to find some information on so one of my favorite
shooters is battle mania die die Gingin or something on the Genesis also called
um troubleshooter and there was a really interesting translation project back in
2007 by a guy named my jet and he did a kind of he took it first of all the
English translation isn't very good and they also they messed up some things
along the way when they did it and so in his hack he did you can select from
english or japanese for the text fix japanese which he did some modifications
and then three different fonts using button combinations during the sega
screen hmm so I was I was emailing some people just to see if anybody could help
me I would I think it'd be cool just to have him mint like you said to have a
menu come up at the loading screen where you could pick through the options cuz
these kind of options like in his heck the only way you'll find out about them
is in the readme file which you know it's from 2007 I think it's up on rom
hacking but yeah there's really interesting stuff like that out there
and they'll take your favorite game you know that's one of my favorite shooters
of all time and and just make it better and especially the English translation
is really cool yeah those are some amazing work like I think the team just
did the police knots one for Saturn and I just downloaded the Castlevania for
the PC engine CD when they took the PS version and then they took all of the
text from that and I think the voices and added it to it and that's a volt
ours got my my duo at the moment but as soon as I get that back that I'm gonna
sit and play through that whole thing because I've never done a play through
other before so whoever that whatever team took the time to do that you know
that's just amazing stuff mm-hmm yeah and on a system like that you don't get
a lot of new content you know the piece engine is there's just not a lot of
people working on it like there are on the Genesis and intend oh yeah and it
looks like we're kind of entering the golden era with a lot of this stuff
there's really interesting sega saturn development tools coming out and yeah
things are looking good well that's nothing that's kind of Awesome now is
because a lot of these people aren't just doing the hacks they're developing
the tools and sharing the tools so that kind of I think you know I'm trying to
remember which one was just released a few months ago but there was a game
where somebody released a Master System game where they released the tools to do
the hacks for it and now there's already two different games based off of it or
something so that was pretty neat yeah I remember reading something about that
too yeah interesting stuff yeah I've got a big
collection of turbo graphic art PC engine stuff to a duo I've got super
graphics they're all RGB amped got um
what's it so the super graphics thing I was just talking with with Corey on the
livestream the other night about this so wasn't there an issue with the ever
drives and using the super graphics versus anything else do you want to talk
a little bit about that because your ever interim turbo ever drive packs
include the correct things right mm-hmm yeah I've got the super graphics as an
add-on there yeah I had some issues when I first when I got my super graphics I
am there's a thread about it at the Craig's forum that I was running I'm
trying to get to the bottom of this to what the answer is but I was having all
sorts of issues with it and other people were having it fine my take on it is
just that there's I think somebody who mentioned this is right there's just a
slight difference in PCB thickness at least
until version 2.3 I think there's a new there's a new hardware revision out now
I've heard up until 2.4 I mean there's 2.5 and somebody mentioned that this is
a super graphics fix and I'm wondering I don't think it's a hardware issue I
think it's just he's standardized maybe the PCB thickness but I was able to get
it working perfectly on mine after hours and hours of messing around by just
wiggling it and I it was a problem that was happening you'll get like you would
get graphical glitches I posted some pictures and the threat of it maybe you
could put those up here later but you would just get some pixelation some
weird colors the screen with flash black sometimes and I'm pretty sure it's
because one of the pins either on the far left side or the far right side what
just wasn't doesn't it wasn't making contact right because I found if I slid
the turbo the the ever drive in all the way and then pulled it out just maybe a
few millimeters and then we build it just a little bit then everything is
absolutely perfect and it takes me about five seconds to do that so it's not a
big issue mm-hmm although if there is some sort of
hardware change in 2.54 super graphics I'll definitely get that too so and
either I'll probably just use my old everdrive for my turbo Express which is
our TV monitor now that's um that's only for the when you when you have turbo
graphics and our super graphics with it right it's not so the duo's and every
business so the super graphics is its own console with like that's right
that's right eight or eight or ten games specific to it and yeah it's it was just
for me it was just affecting those eight or ten games it's like maybe there's a
channel on the PCB that might have I don't know maybe one of the channels on
the car wasn't making contest so it was just for the super graphics not the
duo's or anything else yeah it was it was just yeah I'm gonna do it everything
is absolutely perfect you can't play the super graphics games but what's the
patch biases you have you know I got my I got my do
or my everdrive right here I was just looking at this the other day I think
I've got version 1.2 yeah you can't see it because there's a different camera on
the stream but yeah version 1.2 2013 I think people have this they might
have the issue with the the super graphics then no super graphics I think
it's just a contact issue so super graphics I'm pretty sure should work
fine on that should work fine on all of them as long as you've got it inserted
that's my fear at least I only have experience with my own super graphics
though now the patched BIOS files that you have in your ROM packs is that for
the same thing or is that that's totally different right now that's something
different that is and I don't hope I explained it correctly
Corey explained it the other day and the you and my life and gaming did occur a
fun streaming chat yeah I think I see what he said was by using the by using
the system so when you you have to boot it with a system card and all of your
BIOS files are as if you're loading those different system cards so it only
really matters for certain games and he mentioned altered beast is the one that
he noticed wouldn't work but if you have the newer version of the term whoever
Drive just use your patched BIOS files to
launch and then that I didn't make them but yeah they're any ones from there on
the Pats and then if you but if you have the older one like mine then you
actually have to remove it and use the system cards that came with it not the
BIOS packs yeah that's right mm-hmm because there's some sort of loop or
something with the memory that it gets into and it it can theoretically it
could cause damage they were saying although there's no evidence that it has
damaged anything but yeah it's not the way that it doesn't isn't optimal
because of some missing RAM on the original ever drives right
well that's actually one of the things I learned back
back when I was working with that company that made medical grade
computers is when you say do damage to something it doesn't necessarily mean
you plug it in and it breaks it could mean that if you used the proper version
this console would last 30 years but if you use the improper version over the
last 29 years but then there's also the other extreme where instead of 30 it'll
die at the end of the year and that's that's always kind of what I want to
nail down with these issues is is it something that's like is it a realistic
concern or is it like NASA's fine it's kind of something else is going to kill
this thing before the wrong BIOS file so that's something I always try to hunt
down yeah you should get the new turbo everdrive though I think because you can
probably get you can probably sell your old one on eBay for you know 15 bucks
less than you paid for it and get the new one you get with the new
on he's got a cool little plexiglass cover that comes with it
that's one time I saw that that's pretty neat but then there's also the
differences between one and going up to the 2.4 there have been a lot of
hardware changes that he's put in there like you now you have instant loading
you know like the mega ever drive so the second you press it the second you want
to start your game you jump right into it and then you can use those hacked
BIOS files and then there's potential for other things that you can do with it
in the future - as far as homebrew I think he's added extra RAM in there or
something for them to use got you gotcha but and then there's also just the
layout I think he put in a full line of resistors on each on each line for some
reason I think to clear of noise or to clear up some noise and information
something like that I Karen would pick up these threads again but yeah graphics
using the ever drive to test for some of the jail bar interference and then I was
always I always kind of preferred to use original cartridges just for that reason
I wonder if it introduced any noise at all and so that's why I have you know
it's always good to have multiple sources for the stuff like that yeah and
that's another thing he had was it's lower energy consumption so especially
if you get like a turbo expressed that's kind of a nice feature but it can also
reduce video noise mmm theoretically again I've yet I mean when
I was a kid I used to see all commercials for turbo graphics 16 but I
never even saw one until now purchased it and then I haven't really had time to
sit and game on it so and I think I got the duo and by the time I did the cap
replacement and got it working I sent it off to Tim Worthington in Australia
where he used it for like a year so this is gonna be my first opportunity nicely
sitting game on a you know this is gonna be a PC engine duo but at least I'll
have access to the full library mm-hmm oh you're going to love it yeah you'll
have a lot of fun that's exactly how I was back way back when back in the day I
remember bunks commercials on TV I mean we I never touched turbo graphics and I
never expected to in my life back then they were just too expensive and you
know too too obscure to find in reality or something yeah yeah you should kill
us when you get start getting into the retro gaming stuff because it's like
there are so many things that I saw as a kid or didn't know about that I
discovered now that I just think are amazing and then there's the opposite I
remember Scott came over when I first got my CDI and I RGB mod of it and we
sat down like oh look it's an RGB mounted CDI all right let's go play
Super Nintendo
yeah some games aren't quite as good as remember them that's for sure yeah yeah
yes yeah that was the same thing I did with my do I buy everything as much as I
can broken I buy things broken so I bought my duo with get head missing
sound which is just a dead ringer for it needs a recap so mine didn't just need a
recap one of the one of the reasons I sent it to Tim not just for him to
experiment with was I had the sound was completely dead even after the cap
replacement and he took a look at it and said I replaced the caps okay but one of
the caps leaked and corroded the trace so we actually had to run or jumper wire
to fix a trace for the audio to start working so that's neat aureus for those
consoles as the bad caps yeah yeah that's the first thing I do even if they
don't need it I just enjoy recapping things at this point I've got enough
equipment that I need some excuse to use it you know the funny thing is once I
started to get good equipment and when I say good I don't
mean thousands of dollars I just mean I bought a $60 soldering kit instead of
the $10 one from RadioShack but once I get good equipment I actually enjoy some
of this stuff I used to even when I started the website I used to hate
soldering it was just annoying I'd rather be doing something else but now
it's kind of fun because I'm not fighting with bad equipment I'm just
kind of you know do it now it's under your control and the things that you're
imagining doing on the PCB are actually happening instead of fighting with you
you know we all started with those pencil irons and everything and those
are just those are not fun to use that in flux once my friend Phil kind of you
know verbally abused me and to start using flux he was totally right that was
I was that was a big part of my equipment that was missing that I should
have used years earlier and yeah cheap too it's not like you know flux pins
under $10 and alas for you know quite a while so yeah get some folks some
eutectic solder or some a desoldering you have a D soldering station those are
really handy for gaming I have a hot air rework station and I don't have a DI
have one of those pump T soldering irons which is terrible absolutely terrible
but my 4s the guy that runs the second opinion game's podcast
he has a full D soldering station and he used to we used to live pretty close to
each other now it's a journey from the city but we had a couple projects
planned we're gonna cuz you know combined equipment and make everything a
lot easier plus you've got a really nice like workstation with you know big desk
whatever tons of space to spread out so nice yeah I've got I went I took a risk
and I got a cheaper D soldering station but it's really nice it's like away with
lyi but it's under the ones with the pump built into it right you don't have
to squeeze pump or anything else if you're moving from the Pompeii you'll
love it the pumps work I mean there's no question I use them for a couple years
and then but I got the D soldering station and all of a sudden things
started happening faster well I kind of want to make a video about just about
tools I was talking to Voltaire about this the other day because on the
now I have the modding tools thing and I basically just show that you don't need
to spend hundred dollars worth of equipment but I think I'd like to get
across the fact that if you have like a Super Nintendo and maybe a Genesis and
you want to just add stereo audio to your Genesis wand and throw a chip in
your specimen II just get that cheap soldering gun and get one with the
temperature gauge on it even if it's you know just a one to five dial because so
many people use like 80 watt soldering guns and ruin their consoles you know
you don't need that stuff but if you plan on doing a few consoles or if you
plan on selling you anything you know just to upgrade to good
equipment makes all the difference yeah it does I would love to see an article
by the old tire if you can get them to write something oh yeah especially for
people who are just starting out yeah it's hard to get good information and
you want to get it front you don't want to get it from some crazy hot glue or
something you want to get it from someone who knows what they're doing
yeah well tech stuff is amazing yes yeah he's great um I hope to get a bunch of
people in on this and I think he's got a bunch of projects like that in the works
he actually had a bunch of really good projects in the works and then when the
high def nest was released everything went on hold so he could mod a bunch of
those and he'll probably get back into it you know by the end of the month or
something but yeah and I think um the one thing I wanted to do is I you know I
don't know if anybody online is seeing the messy mod work pages but they
started out as a way that the guys that knew what they were doing say hey look
you know this is you shouldn't be doing it like this you should do it like that
but like everything else in the internet it immediately turned into like a big
control thing where people would just post pictures to make fun of people so I
want to put that up on my page and I want to use my own work as an example
that way I'm not making fun of anybody just so I can show like this you know
this is an example of what not to do here's why I did it this way and here's
why I was wrong and I fear first attempts and then your new it your after
you fixed it now yeah I wish I I don't want my original mods to show up on any
forms that's for sure but just understanding why is like 80%
of it for me because like soldering did you ever do the manual Ness mini mod
right to the sRGB chip by the heatsink on the SNS mini yeah which mine it's the
one where you solder the wires to the chip on the top next to the cartridge
pour it and run him right on the side RGB mod yeah yeah that's yeah that was a
frustrating one was any time you had to deal with a little chip and a little
it's hotter next yeah next to something so you couldn't get into the angle if I
had only known that you know if you get a better soldering iron with a really
clean tip and you get the for what they call it but the little stations with
some you know where you clean off the tip in it so not the sponge but that and
I know I mean I probably wasted hours and hours and hours of my life doing
those mods the hard way and if I had only known to use flux and to keep you
know and what and to have good desoldering braid not cheap desoldering
braid you know you could easily add soldered all those pins and if you
bridge two together if you've been using flux and them good desoldering braid
it's one little dab and it's gone I gotta get yeah I gotta get on all that
stuff so much to do so little time yeah and then just when you finish them honor
of all of your equipment with you when you moved I know I'm yeah I moved to
Brazil about a month and a half ago I'm down here now and I'm secluded from all
my goodies I've got just because when you I'm here for a few years maybe you
know maybe permanently maybe for two or three years and you keep you've got a
limit of what you can bring and so I kind of had to cut myself off like I
tried to bring the most the things that I can get the most use out of so I've
got like a 360 with RGH mod and yeah I mean it back at home in the States and
storage I've got 40 or 50 arcade boards I've got two PPM's
you know everything on my consoles and then here in Brazil it got a modded 360
that I'm emulating through yeah feeling chains look on at me though I don't know
45 minutes away from my storage area and it's located kind of where I used to
live so I always use it you know excuse when I go see friends and
everything but yeah it's rough when you have access to all your equipment and
then you immediately go down to like a skeleton crew of just the bare minimum
yeah and it's but it gives me something to do a little bit occasionally cuz I
let ya it's fun to hunt for deals it's an I'm here in Brazil and I just saw Kim
Justice did that great tech toy Brasil video yeah you sent that to me and I
posted the link a couple weeks ago for that that was interesting you know I saw
that and then classic came in quarterly just did another one on the the launch
of the Genesis and it covered a lot of Brazil and now it's like I want to get a
Brazilian Genesis there's only a master drive and get those going here I did
bring with me my skirt to component converter mmm just in case because I
have a Saturn and a Dreamcast here and they're both set up for RGB so I could
get the Genesis the Brazilian Genesis and then just send my everdrive DUP my
Sega ever drive down here to myself and then I'd be back in action at least for
Sega which of you so do you actually own every one of his ever drives every
single one a few actually yeah yeah plus I'm some of them I have a couple of and
then yeah I'm just big into flash cards I sort of gave myself a role after you
get up to about 20 or 25 consoles you start trying to think about space more
like you said and I can't get myself a role like I'm gonna try to not buy a
console unless it has a flash card because you know everything has one
available now though yeah they do yeah before I mean yeah if you've been here
for 10 years you've seen every console eventually get one yeah it's just really
cool to be part of it right now so now you're with the Neo Geo flashcards
coming out you're working on that ROM set as well right yeah I'm gonna do so
in addition to the ever drive packs most people probably don't know this because
I know there's there's a lot of people who were into console gaming not
something you're into are kidding but I've been a big fan of dark softs flash
carts that he does for our cade systems I have his CPS to kit which is
incredible and CPS too is the system for people who don't know which plays all of
the great Street Fighter games from about after just after a street fighter
to champion edition all the way up until C Street Fighter 3 it's a got Street
Fighter Alpha all of those you can play maja and ProGear incredible arcade games
and for about 300 bucks he makes this great this flesh kit for it which lets
you play these games are extremely expensive if you had to buy them I only
have a handful of actual C ps2 games but uh yeah anybody if you want to anybody
who's interested in moving beyond console gaming should look I think they
should look into first of all Neo Geo because it's
basically once once you figure out once you have a year ahead your mind wrapped
around how the RGB works and then you move into how gamma controllers work if
you've done any pad hacking or anything like that you combine that knowledge and
you figure out oh wait a minute I can play like a Neo Geo MVS on my TV or my
PBM whatever or you know did you use to have an MVS no no I had um some I had
Nintendo Genesis and Super Nintendo and even then I think I I worked like mowing
lawns and rain leaves for an entire summer is to be able to afford both
consoles because oh yeah that's all I was I mean I thought you had the actual
an arcade did you have an arcade cabinet or something well when I was a kid I
only had those once recently I actually had a stand up Mortal Kombat machine ok
that's ended up having to sell that but hopefully I really want I mean to be
honest I want a neogeo stand up machine with you know like maybe my favorite
games and then a rom card in it and I am I gonna have another original Mortal
Kombat and I want to build one more with some kind of good name emulator because
I kind of for the most part I have kind of disdain for emulation I can almost
always find a glitch find something wrong and you know you can't unsee it if
once you've been gaming geeky for a while on the original consoles but it
just it's not for people to get every rating machine
that they like both in space or money or you know or even availability so that's
the one thing that I really want to as far as emulation goes that's the one
thing that's really important is getting a good accurate name emulator and you
know I guess having the rom cart for the NeoGeo consoles that immediately solves
a huge problem because now you have all of the NeoGeo library if you have an MVS
that is every game so you're good you know yeah it's incredible I think it's
gonna kick the doors open to hacks and maybe I mean you there's some pretty
cool homebrew out there there is there tomorrow and then there's people who are
converting Neo Geo CD games to Neo Geo games
yeah that's interesting stuff and I've done the opposite to F released in a
thread some MVS games converted to CD cool which is hit or miss but it's an
interesting wait if you want to hear if you've got a Neo Geo CD and you want to
hear the MVS soundtrack instead for example it works on a handful of games
just go ahead get afraid no I kind of assumed that something like that was out
there but I didn't I never actually stumbled across it because I do I have a
Neo Geo CD that I got just for testing to use and to be honest the load times I
mean they're not bad in my opinion I'm used to that playing ps3 were a couple
of games I've sat for two or three minutes waiting for the game to load
whereas that it's it's less than the load time so yeah to me yeah I've got
two CDs ease so the load time is a little less but yeah people talk about
that it's it's one of those things that people I think over exaggerate because
like Lord carnage always says or whatever that's when you go get your
beer or that's when you go get a coffee or whatever I mean you got a second
break built in occasionally yeah yeah good point
but yeah it doesn't seem bad to me at all so the thing that I was worried I
was wondering about that maybe you could share some light on it I think people
that are already in the know of this stuff are probably I think it's a dumb
question but I've tried to download a lot of Neo Geo ROM sets over the years
and there's always a ton of games that I don't ever remember actually being on
the Neo Geo so what's up with that is that people mixing in general arcade
games with it or is it conversions and you kind of explain how that works and
because the arts are only like a 180 neogeo games total or something yeah I'm
not sure how many there are exactly what it might be is they might be including
it might be a peck like for final burn alpha or something maybe they have extra
thrown in but I have I mean I want to put together when I did the MVS pack I
just want to pull everything out of the latest name which is supposedly the best
the highest quality dumps of these MVS games and just get them all in one pack
and I haven't found that out there anywhere else where somebody's just
pulled out those specific and BS games neither of I and I've looked
without a doubt mm-hmm a lot of that's you really get into the the era of an
area of crappy realms when you start looking for arcade games because those
are just like where did they come from and what are they and nobody ever says
the source or anything well I've even had a really hard time
finding an Aes ROM pack for the home the home versions of the games somebody
didn't work or you need to configure a file individually for each water I mean
it was it didn't really make sense to me and I tried and I spent some time
working on it it just it was kind of convoluted so I'm really looking forward
to being able to get them you know getting the package so it just works you
know yeah I'll have this all sorted out for you pretty soon awesome
dark stuffs got his kit coming out pretty soon and I'm pretty sure I'll be
doing the roll-up X I do the roll-up X for the CPS to also so once you get your
CPS to all set up with dark sauce board you just take your SD card just like
with a never drive you copy the stuff over from I said and I have two sets a
big set with everything Japanese English Chinese Latin America all those and then
I have another set that's just English specific that's more cut down that I'll
do the same thing for NBS and he is for dark sauce project and it should just be
a copy and paste as far as I know there might be a
program that you have to run first to decrypt the games or I'm not really sure
maybe I'll decrypt them first before I put them in this earth ya know what is
the big deal about that cuz I was reading on dark circles forum there was
kind of a little debate going back and forth um what is the issue with
decrypting of the roms before before running them is that does it make it
inaccurate during gameplay or something no it'll the end result will be the
exact same it's just like like on the CPS - I think what you do is you send
the roms to the system and it decrypts them itself something like that with MVS
I think it has to be it can't receive the actual roms and decrypt them it I
think it does it in the cartridge or something I don't really know exactly
but the end result will be the system will think bit for a bit that it's that
it's the actual game as far as I know yeah it was that to me I mean it seems
like a moot point to argue about because if the end results the same either way I
don't know I didn't understand why the purpose of the argument I guess you know
it's a purist thing I can see what they're talking about it doesn't affect
me personally cuz I'll be happy I mean I have the 161 in one it's just a pile of
crap yeah but I mean it's gotten me buy it for several years and I've done a
bunch of like mods to it to try it like gadget UK has some awesome mods that is
posted so that's what I've been getting by with so when dark soft kit comes out
it's gonna be it's gonna be mind-blowing yeah it's gonna pollution eyes my MVS
experience well I I already ordered the Neo SD which I guess is shipping
mid-january supposedly and I'm also gonna order darks offs and I'll do a
review on both and then I'm gonna need to sell at least one of them because
those things are expensive yeah but um it'll be cool to see yeah so I guess you
should probably have the rom packs done around that time anyway right
so it'll match for the release dates yeah as soon as he announces the release
date then I will have my packs up either on that day or pretty close to it over
his forms arcade projects comm arcade - projects comm got you now you have a big
update coming I think well this is gonna air on the 21st so it would be this
Saturday you're gonna have it being released for
your current romp ax right yeah I've been falling behind on my everdrive
packs with the move and everything my wife just finished her PhD and I've sort
of been her editor and that has consumed a ton of my time and so right I've spent
the last week now I've had a week off just going through and getting every
pack updated organized fixed I've had a one like you I keep everything in a
folder of things to do for the overdrive packs and it was just getting a little
too big so what I'm doing is I'm gonna do every single pack is gonna get a nice
update I'm gonna release it on Christmas Eve in the main thread awesome and yet
to be pretty cool a lot of the stuff that you've sent me is going in there a
lot of game geared SMS conversions Sega the Sega everdrive foot so the Genesis
we're getting a really nice update awesome now obviously this will also
have the latest firmware as for the different ROM parts in there as well too
right yeah they have their copy and paste the packs I do so though they have
the latest OS and like for the Sega has both the Sega over there the the old
everdrive MD which now is like the x3 I think the mega ever drive so I'll have
both OS is that you need everything's all set up so copy and paste and I'm
still working on them like I was just patching roms last night petty roms this
morning I trying to beef up the content for everything so anything that didn't
have a lot of new stuff like a guys I patched every translation since 2014 for
the Super Nintendo from I'm hacking site I just took a few hours the Super
Nintendo ones gettin iffy because I think the SD to Smith's can only read a
32 gigabyte SD card and if you start to count in the msu audio packs it's over
that now I think you can is it 32 or maybe I have to have maybe I have to use
a special format too old for 64 yeah there might be a way to get or it might
be just which cards it supports I thought I had a 64 gigabyte in mine
because there's yeah well just like with um you use a hex call box on the PI
you have to format it using windows and then you actually go in with this dos
tool so it's fat32 with 64-bit I gotta try that to see if that will work that
might solve the issue yeah you might go to play around I think get that working
cuz yeah I have sorry yeah msu one-pack suing out like you said those are
getting up there to like 20 30 gigabytes of content just for MSU want yeah yeah
and for anybody that wants to upgrade from their old pack to their new one so
what the way I've been doing it and please correct me if I'm wrong is I go
into the SD card and I go into the save folder and I make sure that I save um
any of my save games that are on there and for things like the ever drive na I
also save any of them the mappers folder because a few times I ended up I forgot
which was which but I dumped fan-made mappers in there instead and then I
format the SD card completely then I dumped your rom pack on there and then I
put the saves and the mappers back on is there a better way to do it or is that
seem to be the that is the best way for sure I think it's best it's also good to
format and ever drive every year too just because I know there's no way that
it can handle fragmentation so some people who might have the same ramzan on
there for three or four years theoretically there could be
fragmentation happening hmm and yeah every that also cuz I go
through and with each revision I might have renamed drums too so if people are
just copying what I like the new set over the old set they're gonna have
doubles showing up of things or the old version especially with the hex yet
something older things like the Master System and the game gear if you do that
they won't show up in alphabetical order so yeah formatting them and putting them
on like that they will mm-hmm yeah there is a tool what's it called that's order
right right which you can run if you ever run into if you've added your own
roms and they're out of alphabetical order which I always see that games
trading ones videos his roms are always out of order and I just want to tell
them about this fat sorter but yeah you run fats order on and it'll go through
and sort everything for you but that's another issue too is that you when you
format it everything gets lined back up medically so yeah definitely just get
your Saves off there and anything that you've customized if you've added rounds
or whatever copy to your computer format it put the new pack and then copy your
stuff back that's the best and the only one that I knew it was an issue was the
Master System one because one version of the OS supported fat16 and the other
supports fat32 so if you have the Master System one and you format it and add the
new OS and it doesn't work just reformat it with the old upgrade and it's kind of
a pain but that's the only one I ever saw that had an issue the rest was very
easy just straight forward yeah I used to Adam I used to have little
instructions on how to format and eventually I got rid of it because they
just became through the years to where you can format just using then you know
the built in tool and whatever OS reason except for Mac OS sometimes people have
problems but yeah you just format it and it's good to go now it's like there's no
special cluster sizes or anything to worry about
although you can treat those if you want yeah I see Crick's every once in a while
talk about adjusting cluster size but I have never had an issue just leaving
everything default is there all is there a specific scenario where people would
have to worry about that theoretically if I think it theoretically if you match
the cluster size generally to the size of the files are gonna be using it'll be
faster but in practice on an on an ever drive and the tiny files that we're
working with I don't think it actually affects them you would have be an
interesting thing for someone to do is play around with cluster sizes and you
know that to the same everdrive and just do a video of it loading on both and see
if you can actually discern you know a few milliseconds difference or something
I mean the only time I've ever noticed a difference is when I used a very old
beat-up slow card versus a newer one and even then we're talking a difference
between 10 seconds and eight seconds mm-hm
yeah I think the SD to ness ness is the one where it's best to have a really
fast card yeah and none of the MSU stuff mm-hmm
any of ya and MSU stuff there's even timing issues that people can run into a
slow cards just when they're running the game itself judge I did though fine with
like dark soft CPS to KITT I try three or four SD cards that I was
loading my test sets on and one SD card I had was loading like twice as fast as
the other ones so it I guess if you're working with certain systems it's best
to play around with your SD cards and find out which one works the best advice
and I will see if the NBS sets the same way right well um thanks so much for
coming on and doing this I'm glad to finally get you on here because I just
so many people use your rom packs and there's such a huge help for me and
everybody I know that uses them so we got this Saturday night the new ROM sets
are awesome to be updated if anybody needs them I always run this where I
don't know how to deal with the legal issue so I'll just say Google smoke
monster ROM sets and it's like the first thing that pops up you can't miss it
so you have to register at the forum for registrations free and then you have the
links right there and they're both on mega and free file or yeah mega and bio
factory now if your international user supposedly file factory should be better
and mega is probably the best for most people
gotcha um anything else did I miss anything anything else to mention no I
think man we've been we've talked about a lot so yeah there's been a lot of fun
being on here that's it's cool to finally talk to you and meet you and get
you in video I know right after all those years of emailing it's cool to
finally meet you so thanks again for everything and I'm sure I'll have you
back on in a bit when we have a more crazy fun ROM stuff to talk about yeah
thanks for having me take care
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