Mattson

The public at large is commenting how Bluehole does not have a chance vs Epic Games. They believe it is because Bluehole is trying to copyright game mechanics or code. This is just people projecting their imaginations. In September 2017 when Fortnite's BattleRoyale mode launched in the announcement email from Epic Games they described it, to paraphrase, 'as inspired by PUBG.' It would be akin to Pepsi releasing a commercial that said "As inspired by Coca-Cola." This is the crux of Bluehole's lawsuit and not as shaky as the court of public opinion would lead you to believe.

But that's why I'm getting a degree.

As a collector could I bounce an idea off you? Using a donor cartridge I can make a SNES reproduction that is indistinguishable from the original, complete with box, manual, and even the posters. I know while I call it a reproduction other people call them forgeries. In materials it costs me about $8 to make a reproduction and I see reproduction carts out there made from snap together cartridges going commonly on Etsy for $50... I can make it for 8 but I also make it look nice when on a shelf with an actual collection. What I was wondering if you think this idea would sell on Etsy. Basically I want to make mock up packages for a game as if it were released for the SNES. So take modern games and put them in SNES packaging. I got this idea to take Super Meat boy and put it on a red Maximum Carnage cart and make the label just a red picture of Meat Boy's face then use an SNES box template and make Meatboy style packaging with a manual and a poster... Use the skill in forgery to make nice looking reimaginings of products that never existed. Do you think I could mark that up and get 50$ for it because it only costs me about 5 dollars to make. It would only be an art piece and have no pcb. Also... How do I find Homebrew developers to give me rights to make repros of their games? I can make really snazzy boxes and manuals to up the demand for them... And finally am I actually describing video game publishing?

I got into the world of reproduction video games. I make SNES games. I really went down the rabbit hole here and to sum up I've got the cost down from $30 if I just buy everything and assemble it but I'm at $11 if I go straight to the manufacturer and buy from them. The problem I've run into is the one piece I'm not getting straight from the manufacturer is the PCB and the pcb makes up for $5 of that $11 for an SNES reproduction cartridge with package. It is really making me angry because the joy of bringing down costs is amazing. For example the biggest expense before the PCB was ink but I found a chinese company that sells ink refills for my printer that brought down my ink costs 18 times from 0.90c/ml to 0.05c/ml. Now my biggest cost after the pcb is paper. The problem with the pcb is if you buy it yourself there are 3 different options and they all have different components. One has less capacitors and chips than the other, is 50% the size, and is 25% less expensive. But the reason why I want to go to school for this is I want to solve a problem in the market and design and sell my own pcbs. The problem right now is if a game has a special processing chip it cannot be put on any of the existing SNES pcbs on the market. To get one of these games on a reproduction cart is you either have to buy an expensive flashable PCB for $23 or get a donor cart by finding a crappy sports game that has the special processing chip and same pcb layout and rewrite the desired ROM over the crappy sports game and print up a new label. There aren't many games that have these special processing chips but the most desirable games like the Squaresoft RPGs and late games from 1995 on pretty much all use some kind of special processing chip. There are good games that use no special processing chips though... the biggest example is Super Metroid but FF3, Chrono Triger, Super Mario RPG, the Megaman's all use special chips... just to name a few. I want to basically emulate these old proprietary processing chips from the 90's on a cheaper and better chip made from the present time. I want to learn if it is possible to write these special processing chips onto one chip and to determine which chip it emulates by soldering jumpers on the back of the pcb. If I can learn how to do this I can make one pcb that can accommodate every type of SNES game. I know it is possible to emulate these chips because all ROMS work on emulators and these emulators have to emulate these processing chips... I just don't know if its possible to program a chip with multiple chips and switching between the layout with jumpers. So as it stands right now I'm trying to learn the science behind pcbs and electronics so I can learn to make my own. I bought the DIY Electronics book bundle from Hunblebundle yesterday for $15 and I'm currently reading Electronics for dummies. I have a friend who had a degree in the field I'm considering going down... electronics engineering. He dropped out in his 2nd year but he's giving me all of his text books. I'm going through Khan Academy to reteach myself mathematics... I've amassed 1.7 million energy points... I started at pre K math telling how many cows are in a picture and the time on clocks and as I type this I'm up to grade 11 in Algebra 2... I'm learning binomial theorem at the moment. School starts in September so I need to be ready. Here is the degree I'm taking: https://www.cbu.ca/academic-programs/program/electronics-and-controls/ I am a Canadian First Nations so this is all free. But part of the problem is I am half white and the grandparents on the white side set me up with something called an educational IRA which pays for my tuition, school supplies, and all that stuff related to my education... I'm basically covered for university two times. The problem with this IRA though is when I went to university the first time I could never get any of this money because to get it I need receipts and I send in for reimbursement but my First Nation's status was paying for everything so I could never use this money. Since I'm getting a degree in Electronics Engineering could I buy a bunch of electronics like TV's, Computers, and Smartphones and write them off as an educational need since I am technically in electronics engineering? The reason I want this degree is so if I fail in my dreams in the video reproduction world I can be 'well that sucks, at least I'm a certified electronics engineer.', and I can open up a repair shop and follow the path laid down by the likes of Louis Rossmann. But what kind of jobs can be gotten with a degree in Electronics. Also... this may sound weird but is it unethical to use my minority status to better my chances at employment in the tech sector? I'm sure Native American is a pretty desirable check box on the diversity list... would I be wrong to abuse this or should I just say fuck it and lean into it? As I said I'm half white but I look first nations. I was raised in an affluent white neighborhood in the united states and didn't find out I was actually first nations until I was 7 years old when my mom, who was adopted as a child, hired a private investigator to find her biological parents and it turns out they were both full blooded First Nations from Canada. What I'm getting at is biologically I am a first nations but culturally I am anything but and actually have a hard time fitting in with my new (real) family. If I'm being perfectly honest I didn't move here to get closer to my roots... I moved here to cut costs. I'm in a quandary here and could use some advice.

Oh yes that is part of the SNES. It is called the CIC chip(Checking Integrated Circuit) The SNES chip is actually better than the NES chip because Tengen wasn't able to break into the patent office for information on how to get into that chip like they did on the NES. Anyway, some updates guys... I think I'm going to give this the ol' college try. I found a supplier who supplies the PCBs already to go and they can be flashed. There's no soldering required. So I am calculating the total cost for all of this... for cost comparisons. The cost for a game, if it has no save feature(like Contra), the materials costs $13.47, with a save feature you're looking at $17.44 for the extra battery, SRAM, and components you need. Now there are a few games with special processing chips... and while yes they are few the few that have these special chips are the best ones. Mario Kart, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy 3, Chrono Trigger to name a few... all require a special processing chip. For those games there is a pcb provided by a site called Infinite Nes Lives that has everything all done up... all you do is literally drag and drop the rom onto the cart... albeit with a proprietary ~$60 programmer. Which isn't too bad considering you need an EPROM programmer and PIC programmer to make the carts described in the preceding paragraph. For programmers and soldering equipment you're looking at about $250. Then there is the cost of the other equipment. You need a box, inner tray, manual, and front and back labels for the cartridge. This is where things get interesting. So, if you go to a print shop for all of this you're looking at about an extra ~$10 per game, the label is purchased online for $5 and a back label costs $2.50... so when all is said and done you're looking at ~$20 per game if you contract out your work. Now if you buy your own printer you can potentially save your own money however you need to learn how to manually refill ink cartridges. The printer to get is the Canon Pixma PRO-100 because it can handle 13x19 paper which is necessary to print up a box and it has the best color quality for comparable printers. The downside is the inks for this printer are dye based as opposed to pigment based which means you get more brilliant colors but everything you print is susceptible to sun damage. This printer costs $300 and it costs $135 to refill the 8 ink carts at $17 each. I've done the math here using data from the page yield/duty cycle of Canon's website for the PRO100 printer. It can do 37 A3 photos which is the size we need for the boxes however a box only uses up about 60% of the available space of your stander A3 sized paper. $135 dollars in ink for 50 games. You add in paper costs you're looking at about $154 for 50 games you're looking at ~$3.10 per game... which is considerably less than the ~$15.00 you'll spend per game at a print shop and buying labels... however if the print shop can do the labels too you're still looking at about ~$8 per game.(all these prices in this paragraph and the preceding do not account for the cost of the manual). The thing is though... that $3.10 per game is over 85% ink costs. You can refill it yourself using a refill kit and start saving boatloads of money. For some perspective. One Canon ink refill cartridge costs $17 This gets you 20ml of ink. You can get 480ml of ink from a third party for $26... Canon charges $408 for this much ink(and this is just for one color, this printer has 8 colors). The math is pretty silly. (20/480)*$17... we're looking at about 0.71c per refill as opposed to $17. The ratio for the value of Canon ink to third party ink is 1/24. $135 for 50 games drops to $5.63 in ink for $50 games, at the $18 in paper and label costs and we're looking at a total of ~$24 for 50 games. The cost of doing it in house comes to ~0.50c per game where as at a print shop will charge you around ~5.00 for the box and inner tray. If they can do the label too it probably would only add about another 50c considering you can print multiple labels per page. Break down for packaging goes like this: make everything yourself: 0.48c/game print shop makes everything: $5.50/game print shop makes everything and you buy prefab labels: $14/game Equipment costs are rough... for the cannon printer it is ~$300, a laminator is ~$100, a silhouette portrait for professionally cutting the labels is about $200... this isn't absolutely necessary but cutting those rounded corners on labels can be hard and this is really only necessary if you want those professional looking pictures. The Silhouette portrait is a paper cutter and if you go crazy and get one that can handle A3 sized paper you can actually get this beast to cut out your game boxes for you and even indent professional creases for you for easy assembly and that extra professional look. The thing is though you can make some really high quality knick knacks with all this shit that you can sell on etsy. You can mass produce super high quality sticker sheets... just to give you an idea.... This product on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Emoji-Emoticon-Love-Instagram/dp/B00VTZ5SXO/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1521044889&sr=8-5&keywords=emoji+stickers This is a pack of 288 emoji stickers for $4.81... just to give you an idea of how much it would cost you to reproduce this... 100 sheets of sticker paper costs $11.36... about 0.14c per sheet. The 288 stickers require 1.5 sheets of paper so 0.21c for paper. To give the appearance of high quality you can laminate them before cutting them out in the silhouette for an additional 0.25c per pack You can make about ~130 4x6 sticker sheets on a refill and 4 sheets are in a pack so you can make about 30 of this Amazon product. The cost of ink per unit is the cost of refilling(0.71c) divided by 30... add in paper costs and you're looking at about 50c for something that is selling on Amazon for $4.81... the thing is though you're not restricted to making just emoji stickers... you can make whatever the hell you want... you could probably recoup your costs selling stickers. Assuming you could sell those 30 sticker sets you printed up at the price amazon is selling them at($4.81) you'll make a revenue of $144.30... the high price of printer ink from the manufacturers starts to make sense when you look at this stuff. Anyway there is some more information if you're interested in the cost... here it is: using the pcb from retrostage.net it comes to 13.47 for the cartridge and if you print the labels yourself about $15 per game. If the game has a save feature you're looking at an additional $3 for the battery, SRAM, and additional components. If the game has a special processing chip your best bet is to get the board for dummies at $26 plus the packaging which, depending on the route you take and the amount of work you're willing to do, will cost 50c-~$20 As for labor... you need to solder a 32 pin ROM to the pcb, three 16 pin integrated circuits, and 7 capacitors. If the game has a save you also need to solder on a battery, a 28 pin SRAM chip, 2 resistors, 2 diodes, and an extra capacitor. Then you need to solder the jumpers depending on the chips you used... so you're looking at about 80 solder points per cart with a save and 50 per cart without. The exact materials needed, as well as instructions, can be found on the product information page for the MegaROM 2.0pcb at retrostage.net... there's a pdf. This will take you about 30m-1h depending on how efficient you are with a soldering gun. Then there is the packaging part. You're looking at 5 minutes to print and about 15m-20m to cut and fold up the boxes. The of course there is writing time to program the chip which can take itself 10-15m... you're looking at about an hour and 30 minutes per game. One thing I haven't really mentioned in all of this are the manuals. Truth is I haven't really looked into the manuals. I'd need to know the surface area of a completed manual to calculate ink costs.... they look to be about 4.65inx6.75in so if they're 40 pages... you can do about 5 manuals on a refill assuming the underlying pages are white... if they're a different color you can do about 3 full manuals. The problem with manuals are they are labor intensive. You need to download the PDF nintandbox and it is just a scan of the manual in chronological order. This isn't optimal for printing. What you need to do is find the middle page with the staple and then use spatial reasoning to find out which pages to pair up and which pages get printed on the back of other pages. So for a 40 page manual you have 20 pages in the PDF. You have to separate them all into single pages and then match them with the corresponding page you need it to be for printing. You also need to spend a good deal of time aligning the pages and even more time touching it up in photoshop by removing creases, staples, fixing up faded colors, adding dickbutts etc etc.... its easy work but labor intensive... I'd say add about 2 to 4 hours in labor time if you want to make a nice looking manual. That is about it... I for one, if nothing else, am excited about getting this printer and selling posters and stickers at the flea market. The Canon Pixma PRO100 can print on 13x19 which is the size of the packin SNES posters. If you're curious as to how I calculated the ink costs. I went to the page yield page on Canon's website and based everything off of the page yield of the lowest ink. It was Cyan at 147 4x6 color photos... black alternatively is 960 4x6. Canon charges $120 for a set of 8 refill cartridges for all the colors and $17 for individual cartridges. There is 19ml of ink in one $17 dollar cartridge. You can get a refill kit for a one time charge of $50 and the ink refills cost $26 for 16oz(~480ml) cheap ink is the key to greatly reducing costs for the endeavor... for reference Canon charges 90c for a ml of ink where as precisioncolors charges 5c for an ml of ink.

What about it? I actually already have an EverDrive that I use on my original SNES.

One of my biggest regrets is losing my SNES collection and looking back how well I even treated them when I did have them was not nice either. I want them back. But buying them all new with the boxes is going to be expensive. I don't want loose carts. Buying them may be untenable but I realized with a 3D printer I could just make the cartridges and possibly just make my own reproductions. What ensued was a long journey of research and some frustration but ultimately immense curiosity. What I am looking to create are complete reproductions minus the instruction manuals and the inserts... my aim is not to make forgeries here but rather tangible copies of my old games in a package as close as I reasonably can get to when I got them new as a child. The goal is to make them legit at a glance but easy to tell it is a reproduction upon inspection. Right now I'm wrestling the idea of going with the classic grey for the shell's of the carts or a black color. The point of black would be to immediately tell it is a fake and be a nod to Tengen who famously made unlicensed Nintendo games with wonky colored cartridges. So I made a shopping cart. I'm going to need pcb, chips, resistors, capacitors, diodes, batteries for those games with save information and of course a soldering gun and solder to put this all together. Then a programmer to actually program the ROMs onto the chips. Now, this is a very labor intensive way to the traditional way hobbyist retro game reproducers make their SNES games. Traditionally what is done there is they use what are called 'donor cartridges' and they just remove the ROM from the PCB, wipe it by baking it under UV light, and program the desired game onto the chip. This has its limitations in that you can only put games that use the same pcb type onto the donor cartridge. For example. Lets say you see a copy of Madden '95 kicking around in a game bin for like three dollars. You buy it and look it up at SNES Central where it shows the pcb type. From there we can see the other games that use this pcb are Illusion of Gaia, NHL '95, Secret of Mana, Super Momotarou Dentetsu III, and World Cup Striker. The downside to this method, for me at least, is it requires the destruction of a bonafide SNES game. So no thanks. You may be wondering, what is the cost of all this. First you need the pcb which can be purchased from retrostage.net for 5$. They also sell the case here and the supercic chip which allows the game to be played on actual SNES consoles; they go for 5$ and 4$ respectively. I just tallied it up. The games require—typically: ROM, RAM, one or two integrated circuits for decoding, a battery, resistors, diodes, capacitors. As to the exact parts you need for specific games there is a spreadsheet online that outlines for you what is necessary for the ROM you want to reproduce. As for step by step instructions on how to put it together there is a pdf on the product page of the SNES pcb on retrostage.net. But yes the cost. The cost for all these components comes to about 10$ The cost for a loose cart of an SNES game is 24$ The next cost are the aesthetics. Right now while yes you do have a playable SNES game it is just a blank cartridge on the outside. Next we need labels. These can be purchased online premade and ready to stick on for 5$ for the front label or 2.5$ for the back label. Then you need the box for the game, the inner tray for the game to sit on, and a bag to keep the cartridge in... these run another 5$ At the end the whole thing will look like the end of this video: Also here is a video on how to create the actual box after you've got it printed from a kinkos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NsNBKqbCDQ This comes to a total of 36.50$ for each game, if you want a manual add another ~5-10$ to the cost and you're looking at about 45$ for a completed product not counting all the time it took you to make... so ultimately it isn't the most economical project. This of course is a rough estimate, some games require less components and others require more so its a good baseline. As you can see I have done a fair bit of research... and I have never picked up a soldering gun so this is going to be a fun hobby for me. I am ready to make a purchase but the reason I come here is for help on cutting costs. Currently I'm going through retrostage.net to get the PCB and cartridge shell. Is it possible to create my own PCB and shell? How would I go about doing that? Can they be 3D printed? Is 5$ a fair price for a pcb or is it possible to get that cut down? The majority of SNES games out there have PCB's that are half or even a quarter of the size of the pcb retrostage offers. The reason the pcb is so large is because it is designed to hold the largest possible SNES games that require such a large pcb but when you make the smallest games there's lots of unused space... like over 75% of the pcb. In my next post I am going to document the actual games from my collection that I intend to make. This topic is intended to log my progress.

Go on.

Yeah I was just curious. I remember back when the Playstation came out, Christmas 1995, I was so excited. I had hooked it up and before I could even turn it on I tripped over a cord and sent it crashing down to the ground and it broke. I remember instantly crying and getting scared at what my dad would do when he found out. He found out and he didn't get angry at me at all. He told me not to worry about it and he'll take care of it. Next day I had a brand new Playstation... my dad had purchased a new one and then returned the old one saying it didn't work when we hooked it up. I just thought a scam in this vein would be hard to pull off today with registered serial numbers and stickers with barcodes.

PRP means product replacement plan. It is essentially insurance for the product you buy. I purchased a Nintendo Switch from them yesterday and I got the PRP... normally I don't get them but the sales person was right on and I felt like he earned that commission. To register the PRP in their system the employee had to scan a barcode on a sticker on the Switch itself. There is a hole in Nintendo Switch boxes that allows the Best Buy employees to scan the hardware itself. My question is, if I were to recreate this barcode in photoshop and print up a sticker and then slap it on a broken switch to get 'my' switch replaced how would they know? If a switch is won't turn on that barcode is the only identifier they have... Does Nintendo nuke the serial number remotely to prevent this from happening? I'm just really curious and do not intend on doing any of this.

It's a picture of a portrait painted in the 1600's... how do I prove the copyright has expired?

I am looking to print a portrait of my favorite philosopher onto a canvas and I'm just curious how does one go about doing this? But more importantly than that... how big can I feasibly print the picture with out it magnifying imperfections too much(the file is jpg)? The base image that I acquired is 1600x1377 pixels. Also I have confirmed with certainty the photo is in the public domain so there will be no issue with copyright. Anyone have any experience in this field?

Never mind... Olympic Winter Games, Women’s Ice Hockey Tournament (9-25 February 2018) Group A: USA (1), Canada (2), Finland (3), Russia (4) Group B: Sweden (5), Switzerland (6), Japan (7), Korea (8) Korea is going to have to make it out of its group for this possibility to even happen. I'm so bummed right now... it's going to suck having to break this news to the group chat in the morning. Also... wtf @ that group?

I've got some friends and we've got a pool going. I'm locked in at 16 goals against and I got one friend who went as high as 27. How many goals do you think Team Canada will drop on them?

I got the game and I am having an absolute blast with the single player. Sure the story is uninspiring but this game should have a subtitle: Fan Service As a DBZ fan this game was well worth the price of admission. One issue I'm having that isn't a deal breaker(but is for some) is I cannot connect to online matches. Out of curiosity I ran a test... I played for 1 hour and only tried to play ranked matches... I found 7 opponents in that time but was only able to connect to 1 of them as I just get dropped right away. Does anyone else have issues finding opponents in this game?