People still play ExciteBots online in 2023. They’re crazy good it’s quite intimidating. I play it like Excite Truck but the top players do shortcuts and pull lots of tricks. Lol.
But yeah Exite Truck is one of the greatest. I remember your old posts about it.
My oldest (16 years ago, it says!) Excite Truck video features a shortcut that speed runners discovered separately and still use today. And I didn’t even realise!
And then there was that video where somebody read out forum threads. “MF…EXCITE!” I’d like to watch that again. I play Excite Truck through every year or two. It’s just brilliant.
The only thing that comes close for me is Downhill Domination on PS2. Actually an older game than Excite Truck so I wonder if they were inspired by it in any way.
Super excited to have found a brand new NTSC-J unopened Wii console from late 2006 at a good price (~$100). Came with unopened Wii Wheel, Wii Fit, Wii Play, and Classic Controller!
Been looking for an NTSC system as PAL systems don’t natively support S-Video and even homebrew workarounds aren’t robust since you’re not guaranteed NTSC video output across every channel, homebrew app or screen. Lots of annoyingly fiddling with cables. The disc drive is also wearing out on my current PAL model.
It arrived today and I wasn’t expecting to get so nostalgic over the unboxing, it really did feel like December 8, 2006 again. Just the way things like the Wii remote are packaged. And the brilliant feel of a glossy console that hasn’t got a single scratch or mark on it!
The Wii packaging was really something else, my first experience of a non-apple product really doing a fantastic job of making the unboxing an experience.
Yeah, the two tray design of the box is great, everything is laid out for you to uncover and assemble. Love how the peripheral packaging is designed in a consistent but fresh manner as well. The graphic design of the SFC/N64 peripherals boxes is still my favourite but here the actual product is on display.
It’s interesting that you bring up Apple as it seems to be one of those things which goes full circle. Game Boy Pocket’s original packaging looked like this in Japan and Europe:
It was written so early in the Wii timeline - pre-launch - it contains only a short creation story and speculation. I really appreciate how open minded the publication was about what it might all mean.
I’ve been meaning to extract my PAL GameCube memory card saves for a while to use on my laptop and I read the easiest way is to just get a Wii and do it that way.
Is there an ideal Wii to aim for if I’m picking one up? Obviously I want one with the GameCube ports but anything else I should look for?
The GameCube is kind of a hassle and sub optimal set up as I have an RGB cable into my OSSC which I just pass through to the tv to scale since I dislike the bob deinterlace.
Sure I could get a GCVideo and Swiss capable memory card but the Wii seems less hassle since I have component cables anyway for the Wii.
Edit: actually I must’ve chucked my component cable when we moved, so I’ll need one of those too.
So what’s the status of the 480p bug these days? Thought about picking up a Wii again and discovered this mess. Seems like the best thing you can do is get a 60 board revision, but even then it’s not guaranteed you’ll get a BU99 chip and you’ll have no way of knowing without tearing the thing apart. Sounds like a PITA.
And apparently there is a software fix, but it only works on the original revisions?
The only other thing I read was about a hardmod HDMI chip you can solder in, which seems to be the ‘best’ method, but I don’t know if it benefits from the BU99 chip or not as well.
AFAIK the original hardware version is the only version that requires the fix.
More importantly, are you sending video to a native 480p display? If not, you’re either using a scaler or HDTV to do upscaling, then the benefits of the 480p fix will be lost anyway. So forget about it.
I’m hardcore and play on a 480p EDTV. But I’d guess 99% of people don’t do this.
A cheap Wii U (not sure how easy they are to find) would also do the trick. I believe the games are nearest neighbor upscaled to 1080p when played in Wii mode.
i remember reading that wii VC games ported to the WU might be a bit darker & have some slight graphical changes, likely along the lines of color or such? always wondered if much was known about playing wii games themselves on the WU - the times ive done it, i’d not noticed much change, but it’d only been on stuff like sin & punishment 2
