Well shit. NameZero got smarter and made their banner code better. So I got this page auto-forwarded to what page it really is. Problem now is that it now gives away the gag (that this page is on Tripod) and has 2 popup windows. Shit.
I’VE BECOME EVERYTHING I’VE EVER HATED!!!!
Oh well. I guess if I really had a problem with it, I could just pay money or something.
Stop what you’re doing.
If you have:
Go here. This is the homepage for NesterDC, a port of Nester to the Dreamcast. Nester is a NES emu for Windows that has had the foresight to be open source and portable. The Dreamcast has had emulators before. DreamSNES is a port of SNES9X a SNES emulator – DreamSNES’ only flaw is that it’s not fast enough to be feasible yet. It didn’t take long for someone (a warez group in fact) to figure out that the Sega Smash Pack, Volume 1 for the Dreamcast was in essence a Sega Genesis emulator and 10 ROMs, and equip it with a menu loader system. This went under the moniker “SegaGEN” – SegaGen is good, but it’s rather hit or miss. When a game works, it works more or less flawlessly. When it doesn’t – it doesn’t. Period. The only real qualm is with the sound – it either sucks or doesn’t exist.
This isn’t to say NesterDC is perfect – the sound blows, and the menu interface could use some work. However, it runs NES games either at full speed or really damn close – close enough that, with the sound off (which speeds it up) you can fool yourself into thinking you’re playing a NES on your TV. Well, except that it doesn’t “stretch” the image to fit your screen like the NES did. It needs some work, but I was floored to be able to play Mega Man on my television this morning.
I used to be into NES emulation – really into it. I ran a site called “The Gray Area” – a Blue’s News of the NES. It’s gone now (though on a CD somewhere, I think). This is back when NESticle was king of the hill (still is, for the most part) and there were still NES ROMs to be released. I proposed an open source NES emulator called OpenNES, but no one took me up on the idea to code it (though I did get an interesting email from Mindrape, the guy who stole the NESticle source code). Instead we kept having attempts to code a NES emulator in QBasic. Baffling.
The games NESticle couldn’t run could be run in fwNES, an emulator that had an unprecedented support for mappers (a somewhat abstract concept – the method in which a NES game “mapped” the NES’ resources). fwNES’ only problem then was that is was slow on computers at the time (but not so much now – it runs too fast on my system). fwNES has not been updated in more than 2.5 years, so it’s probably safe to say that it’s dead.
A year or so back an emulator called NESten came out. It’s pretty good and it’s Win32 native. What’s really cool about it, though, is that it uses a plugin architecture (like I proposed in OpenNES) and the author has released the source code for the plugin .DLL files so that people can implement their own mappers, meaning that mapper support is no longer soley in the hands of the emulator author, nor does having them in the hands of the public force the emulator to be open source.
The other “big” NES emulator right now is Nester. Big because, while it doesn’t have the features of NESten, it is open source. There have been other open source NES emulators, but most of them haven’t been worth a damn. Nester seems pretty good in this respect. Nice to see the ideas I proposed (which probably weren’t read) in OpenNES have more or less finally seen their way to implementation. Hopefully NES emulation will someday reach perfection. At the very least it needs some clarification – witness the five categories Zophar divies them into.
Oh, and I saw the new Denis Leary show The Job. It’s an entertaining show, but I’m somewhat disappointed. Mainly in the respect that it’s half an hour – I’m used to NYPD Blue. Hell, that’s the problem – I was expecting NYPD Blue. Still, I’m a huge Leary fan and I’ll keep watching in the hopes that it finds its spot – I just hope it does. The first episode just seemed like it was trying too hard.
I have committed a horrible sin.
Used to be, way back in the early 90’s, Aerosmith was my all time favorite band. I had all of their old albums on cassette – these things went for like $4 – along with their new ones. When the era of the CD came into my life, I bought all of their old albums – again – on CD when they got re-released. Then I sold them all (at a loss) to people I knew so I could buy Box of Fire – a boxed set with all of their old albums, plus a bonus CD. I have purchased all of their latest albums on the first day.
In recent years Aerosmith has kinda fallen by the wayside. I still think they’re great (even with that blasphemous Super Bowl appearance), but other groups have filled the four year gap that seems to separate Aerosmith albums. I’ve been spoiled by biannual releases by groups like GWAR and Metallica (though the latter of those two seem to enjoy unloading outtakes each year at Christmas). Groups like Tool can afford to wait four years or more – their albums seem to be better that way. Still, I’m an Aerosmith fan out of principle if not necessarily by practice.
Tomorrow, March 6th, their new album Just Push Play will be released. I, however, will not be purchasing it. This has nothing to do with loyalty or any commentary on my opinion on them – it’s because I’m broke. Well, not really, but my financial situation won’t be comfortable for a while (I’m hoping April).
That’s not the sin, however. The sin is that I have already listened to the album on CD. Yup – I’ve become the music industry’s worst nightmare – I have the album on MP3 and have already burned off a copy. I’d love to know how exactly someone got a hold of the album early. I tried to not use my knowledge to obtain a copy, but money’s tight and blank CD’s are cheap.
I will repent, however. Come April I’m purchasing the album. And probably the Jaded CD single as well (Aerosmith is one of those groups I like to collect). This doesn’t make it right, however. If there are enough “me”s in the world, then Just Push Play won’t hit #1 on the charts this week. My April purchase won’t make much difference in a month. And that’s why the music industry is afraid – if the big fans won’t pay, then who will?
Moving past all of that, it is kinda cool to listen to an album before it’s released – even if it’s just for a day.
Moving further, here’s my nutshell review:
Aerosmith
Just Press Play
Artists have a conundrum. If they make albums that all sound the same, then they grow stale, but if they change from album to album, then people wish they sounded more like the group they used to like.
In listening to Just Press Play, I kinda wish we had the good ol’ Rock and Roll Aerosmith, like in “Rag Doll” or “Young Lust”. Having said that, the album’s not bad – I just wish they’d ditch the horn section from time to time.
The first ever Aerosmith produced Aerosmith album works – but it’s a little too heavy on samples and other effects – record scratching should never find their way unto an Aerosmith CD. However upon first listen, it’s entertaining.
As for the cover art, however, well Aerosmith’s last three or so album covers have sucked – the worst being Get a Grip. This one has a robot Marilyn Monroe doing that blown-up dress maneuver. She looked too much like that computer animated Super Bowl commercial about canned food (look it up!). Some artists can afford to have crappy cover art (when the Rolling Stones do it’s it’s fine art), but Aerosmith needs to do some more work.
It’s great to have the Bad Boys from Boston back, and if there’s any justice in this Eminem/Britney Spears/Jennifer Lopez/(generic Boy Band) infected world, they’ll kick ass and bring Rock and Roll back with them. We can only hope.
Oh, and a new issue of Total Movie came in the mail today – looks like they made it to four issues.