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The games Nintendo didn't want you to play: Tengen
Recently, I took a look at Nintendo’s MMC line of mappers, and some other boards. All boards for the NES’ western releases had to be manufactured by Nintendo...
nicole.express
Nicole Express: Hobbyist video game development, examinations into old consoles, and more!
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Visit nicole.express → RSS feedOn Hacker News Mar 2021 – Jul 2026
Games & Graphics 13History & Retro Computing 11Hardware & Electronics 11Society, Policy & Culture 1Software Engineering 1Networking & Internet 1
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What made the NES so interesting?
I often like to cover oddities here; details of computers and arcade systems people may not have heard of, that didn’t sell well but had unique or interestin...
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You can't trust the internet anymore
I like things that are strange and a bit obscure. It’s a habit of mine, and a lot of this blog is to document things I haven’t heard of before, because I wan...
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How I make graphics for retro systems and retro-styled games
Game consoles, especially older ones, are defined more than anything by their graphics capability. The unique graphical limitations of a system can often mak...
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Every Graphics at Once: Nintendo's Popeye
I’ve made some modern games in retro style, and one thing people will always tell you is, make sure your pixels are the same size. When your base resolution ...
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Yes, you can play Duck Hunt without a television (but I can't)
Duck Hunt is considered a classic of the Nintendo Entertainment System. But surprisingly, the concept of hunting ducks did not originate in 1984– people have...
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First Is the Worst: Nintendo's Color TV Game 6 and 15
If you told Yamauchi Fusajiro that the little playing card business he had just started would one day sell video game consoles, he would have no idea what yo...
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Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to know
The Apple ][ is one of the most iconic vintage computers of all time. But since Wozniak’s monster lasted all the way until 1993 (1995 if you could the IIe ca...
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Collision Detection Is Hard: The Story of Alf
Today we’re talking about ALF. It’s a surprising move for Nicole Express; we do not condone cat-eating. But neither did Alf, eventually. In any case, we’re n...
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You can use lightguns on LCDs sometimes
Old-school cathode ray tube TVs have become de rigeur in the retro scene as the true way to experience retro games “the way they were designed”. But there’s ...
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Nicole gets a real computer – the Microsoft Z80 SoftCard (2020)
So there I was, very happy with my Apple ][plus. But then I saw someone on the internet post, and it seems that my Apple is an overpriced box with a toy micr...
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Isn't she just Misunderstood? The Casio Loopy
Imagine asking Julius Caesar to review the arcade game Galaga. He lacks the knowledge of space that even children have today, and certainly can’t recognize a...
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A floppy disk MIDI boombox: The Yamaha MDP-10
Longtime readers of Nicole Express might know that I dabble in playing the organ. But sometimes I want to play with sounds that don’t have the organ’s defini...
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Sega 3-D Glasses: How did they work?
Most people have two eyes, allowing for a stereoscopic view of reality.[citation needed]. Nevertheless, video games are generally designed to run on monitors...
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It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Cassette Vision
The Epoch Cassette Vision was a moderate success. But in 1983, that all ended, when Nintendo and Sega released new consoles, which had more advanced hardware...
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Reviving a Dead Audio Format: The Return of ZZM
Long-time readers will know that my first video game love was the text-mode video game slash creation studio ZZT. One feature of this game is the ability to ...
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Composite Video on the NES: Why's it so wobbly?
The Nintendo Entertainment System. Is it the platonic ideal of an 8-bit video game system? Well, only because it’s so prominent and successful– it’s actually...
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Converting from the Game Gear to the Master System
Sometimes people ask me: “Nicole, how do you convert a Master System game to the NES?”, or some other combination of game consoles. And the answer is invaria...
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Pump up the charge: Getting -5V from a 5V power supply
When it comes to electronics, I am a woman of simple interests. Ideally, I only want to care about one voltage, and ground– there’s a reason I did so much be...
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Speeding up the Super Game Boy
The Super Game Boy allows you to play Game Boy games on your Super Nintendo. This is an impressive feat, when you consider that the two consoles share basica...