🕹️ Melted Electronics has launched the Glitch Boy, a hardware NES emulator and chiptune synth built to corrupt game memory in real time using onboard dials, MIDI, CV, or live audio inputs without crashing the system.

Creator Martino Maranzana built it as both a standalone handheld and a Eurorack module. You load your NES ROMs onto a microSD card and feed composite video out to a monitor. Line-level audio input lets music trigger the visual glitches, saving you the trouble of tilting your cartridges by hand.

The open-source firmware is hosted on GitHub if you want to map your own custom controls.

🔗 Time Extension

#emulation #nes #hardware

🚀 SMGCommunity has reached 100% decompilation on 2007's Super Mario Galaxy, and community group Luma's Workshop is using that code to build a native PC port named AstroCore.

Running native code instead of leaning on Wii emulation means targeting higher graphics rendering and better performance. You'll need your own dumped copy of the game to extract the assets for building it. Once cleanup wraps up, the team is moving straight on to Super Mario Galaxy 2.

🔗 GBAtemp

#decomp #port

💾 Developer TheRasteri got a Flash game running natively on an original 1981 IBM PC, 8088 CPU and all.

CGA graphics cards were never built for 2000s web animation, so the port hacks the display controller chip in assembly to squeeze a custom 160x86 pixel window out of standard text mode. The entire state machine was written in C using Open Watcom V2 and tested across a stack of vintage DOS rigs.

Because if anything deserved custom hardware hacks on a 4.77 MHz processor, it was a Flash game full of toilet humor. 💩

🔗 Hackaday Retrocomputing

#port #dos

💾 Final DOOM (1996) was almost released for free online. TeamTNT was hours away from launching their 32-level episode as a downloadable mod when id Software's John Romero stepped in to buy the project, bundling it alongside maps by brothers Dario and Milo Casali for retail.

That gave players two full 32-level campaign episodes packed with room traps, keycards, and demon hordes. The trap placement in these levels definitely didn't go easy on anyone.

🎮 Play Final DOOM in your browser

#action

🚀 Fate of the Galaxy is out, bringing a Star Wars space sim to the open-source FreeSpace engine.

It's a free total conversion running on Windows, Linux, and Mac, with campaigns for the Rebels, Empire, and privateers. You get 64 ships, working cockpits, and support for everything from VR to four separate joysticks.

All the missions were built using the engine's classic FRED editor. Just calibrate your controller deadzones before jumping into your first dogfight so your ship doesn't spin endlessly in circles.

🔗 GamingOnLinux

#mod #freespace #pc

💾 In Jagged Alliance (1995), a handy item-duplication glitch lets you double your medical kits just by holding the item with your mouse cursor during a quick save, then quick restoring.

Madlab Software shipped the turn-based tactics game across eight 3.5" diskettes. Designed by Ian Currie, Linda Currie, and Shaun Lyng, it has you manage a squad of mercenaries to reclaim Metavira island sector by sector and harvest its valuable sap.

🎮 Play Jagged Alliance in your browser

#strategy

🤖 Earth 2140 (1997) came out of Polish studio TopWare Programmy in Kraków, kicking off a whole strategy series. Players first got their hands on it through demo files like Interplay's earth.zip, which packed in tutorial missions.

You scoop up surface resources, convert them to credits at refineries, and command mechs, aircraft, and ships to wipe out enemy bases. If a campaign mission gets too nasty, holding Shift and typing rtkhcshe drops $5,000 straight into your bank.

🎮 Play Earth 2140 in your browser

#strategy