for those who take it further than just playing the games.

[LimitedEditionMuseum]

For you guys who know about every aspect of games from the stuff on the circut boards, how the game was made, who designed it, when it came out, and all those things that you know, how do you learn those things? Like those guys who took the neo geo x apart and figured out how it was made. How why and when did you take it past just playing games.

[Aussie2B]

I never really made a concerted effort to learn more about games outside of the experience of playing them. I just have a curious mind so I'm always reading and looking stuff up for fun, and after many, many years, you pick up a lot of useless trivia. :P

[Daria]

Mostly from ummm... browsing message boards and link hopping.

[wiggyx]

I definitely do. I tinker with everything. I recall taking an NES game apart a week after getting my NES and my mom screaming at me because she thought I broke it LOL

Still the same today, whether it's to mod, repair, paint, etc. Just too hard to resist the temptation.

[LimitedEditionMuseum]

In the Genesis or SNES topic, people got really technical. You can't learn that by browsing.

[needler420]

In the Genesis or SNES topic, people got really technical. You can't learn that by browsing.

W U NO HAZ VIDEO MAME KNOWLEDGE? :roll:

[LimitedEditionMuseum]

I don't think Wiggyx and the others learned to mod and reprogram devices by looking at a video. I'm pretty shur you have to do more hands on and have a knowledge of computers and electronics.

[needler420]

I don't think Wiggyx and the others learned to mod and reprogram devices by looking at a video. I'm pretty shur you have to do more hands on and have a knowledge of computers and electronics.


I'm pretty sure Wiggy has a engineering degree so that probably helps with his modding.

[ccovell]

In my childhood, I took everything apart with a screwdriver: toys, radios, even my CoCo2 and NES.

Then I managed to take apart my NES games (I had no carts with the flathead screws) by using a thumbtack on the security screws. Had fun looking at the chips inside. Got an inkling (by shorting their pins while the game was running) which ROMs had program data and which had graphics data on the carts.

Still, with little programming knowledge, as an adolescent I got the NES Game Genie and started messing with games randomly, which eventually got much more controlled and refined (I took notes of all the codes I put in and their variations in a notebook.) Even as a 13-year-old, I knew that the first 2 letters, and the last letter of the GG code could cycle through all possible values that a code effect could produce. So that's quite a step towards understanding how CPUs and game systems work in general. Of course, if there had been actual "programming" lessons I could take in school or at a community centre, I could have learnt about this the direct way, but alas, school was always limited to LOGO or BASIC. (BASIC lessons were always limited to making programs that "chatted" with the user only...)

Anyway, I also had fun messing with the backplane of my Turbografx for some cool results. :)

[Jack_Burton_BYOAC]

Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, and then Read some more.

I read every game magazine in the 90s and picked up the basics, then some high school DC electrics class, Intro to C++ in college, then a ton more tinkering around on my own. Learning to build your own PC will let some skills transfer back to consoles.

Then I started reading the arcade controls forum, shoryuken.com tech talk, built my own arcade sticks, repaired some dreamcasts. I got a lot better from there.

Then I started reading assemblergames. THEN my eyes opened really wide and I realized I don't really know much at all.

[ImMelody]

I know I'm new here, but I can agree that it's a lot of reading and tinkering. I started fixing NES and SNES controllers when I was in elementary school. My brother had a horrible temper when playing games and broke controllers all the time. So I'd open up and fix them over and over. Since then, I went to college for physics and electronics was an essential course for the degree.

Now, I'm not saying I have the knowledge of a lot of the people here, because this isn't where my primary interests are at, but if it were, I see no reason to think that you can't learn it all with just some time and desire to learn.

[Daria]

Oh. I'm more into software than hardware. Webdesign and computer programing.

Not so good at the taking things apart and putting them back together correctly sort of thing.

[LimitedEditionMuseum]

A lot of times I have no idea what you guys are talking about but its amazing how much you guys know about this stuff.

[wiggyx]

Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, and then Read some more.

I read every game magazine in the 90s and picked up the basics, then some high school DC electrics class, Intro to C++ in college, then a ton more tinkering around on my own. Learning to build your own PC will let some skills transfer back to consoles.

Then I started reading the arcade controls forum, shoryuken.com tech talk, built my own arcade sticks, repaired some dreamcasts. I got a lot better from there.

Then I started reading assemblergames. THEN my eyes opened really wide and I realized I don't really know much at all.

Dude, Assembler often makes me feel like I'm retarded.


A lot of times I have no idea what you guys are talking about but its amazing how much you guys know about this stuff.

Just start breaking stuff.

Better yet, buy broken stuff and rip it apart with no fear of breaking it. You should see the stacks of broken consoles and parts I've acquired over the years. I honestly like modding consoles and such more than I do playing games at this point. Just a tad more rewarding ;)

[kedawa]

I learned how things work in order to fix them, because I was always breaking things as a kid.
When I was 12, my parents bought me an Amiga 500, and the technical info that was in the manual was so extensive that it really helped demystify computers for me.
I had a friend who was even more interested in electronics than I was, and between the two of us, we could fix just about anything.

I often wonder how things would have turned out if the internet had been available to me back then. On the one hand, I would have had access to all the information and resources I could ever need to learn about this stuff, but on the other hand, there would be millions of boobs to look at.

[Niku-Sama]

link to the neo geo x tear down please!

[LimitedEditionMuseum]

I really hate all the bitching going on about it but here it is.
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?239795-quot-Neo-Geo-X-Hacking-and-Mods-quot-TECHNICAL-POSTS-ONLY!-(spacer-thread)