Ever fancy using something else than a joypad with your megadrive?

Sebastian's work interfacing with old Sega hardware for sound synthesis seems to be paying off - and the results sound quite nice -

In this video, the Sega Mega Drive II is controlled via the MIDI keyboard controller. Various parameters can be controlled from the keyboard, as one can hear in the video.

- Sega Mega Drive MIDI Keyboard Video

His research even brings the iconic blue hedgehog under musical control.
Source Make: Blog.

The pads and mods on flickr

The interesting thing about flickr is the amount of pics people show of their mods and rare controllers.

The most interesting find is this large NES controller in early progress.


Not much info as yet, but hopefully a Nes version of the SNES version posted on here last month. The modder mrdodd, has also put up a mp3 player inside a nes controller.
What ever the case we'll keep you posted.

Some other interesting pictures of this agetec Dreamcast stick mod, by zapeipaa.




"I switched the crappy joystick for a Seimitsu LS-32-02 and I love it so far. This is the guide I used (thanks to GaijinP for the link):

www.geocities.co.jp/AnimeComic-Name/4989/dc/dc.html

The guy uses a Sanwa stick, which is smaller. I had to cut off all plastic around to mount the LS-32-02. Also, the Seimitsu harness has different colors, so I had to do trial and error to find which wire to attach to which. Thanks to the landlord who lent me his awesome tools, without them I couldn't have done it."

Samba de Amigo - more maracas shell pics

Sega has just unveiled, at le Festival du Jeu video in Paris, the final version of the red maracas that will be used for Samba de Amigo Wii for the Wii, released today in Europe. Sega has confirmed to Gamekyo that a special bundle 'Samba de Amigo Wii + 4 maracas' will be available in about one month from now.
Source gamekyo.

New Samba De Amigo trailer, no sign of maracas

The new Samba De Amigo trailer is out, complete with a break dancing chimp!
But what is interesting, no actual maracas addon, just a standard Wiimote, and nunchuk setup, not a rattle anywhere...well apart from the chimp, which pretty much goes to confirm that there will be no official addons from sega, i'm guessing we're going to have to go unofficial as reported earlier this week.

Samba maracas are unofficial, which probably means no bundle

Samba de Amigo ships out next week and we're still scrambling over the maracas situation. We once thought that a retailer's mocked-up bundle box was proof that a maracas peripheral would be bundled with the game, but that image was taken down and, in fact, Sega denied that a peripheral would be produced. And then that statement was seemingly excised from the original source. And then actual pictures appeared of some Wii maracas, along with standalone retail listings. It's been a bit confusing.

It would appear that you'll be paying an extra $14.99 for the first set of maracas and not the second, because looking at the box, it is quite clear that these Wii maracas are not official Sega products. Gamestop lists them as being produced by Cokem International. That, and the fact that no retailer mentions a bundle (and the fact that Sega said they weren't making any) makes it very likely that you'll get a disc with Samba and nothing else.

The good news is that it's basically just a bulb with a Wiimote-shaped slot (and hopefully some rattly stuff inside), and so it doesn't really matter who makes the thing.
Source Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Old videogame patents

Insert credit posted this on videogame patents on the net:
Frank was browsing around the google patent archives, and happened upon a few game patents. Then I started poking around, and found a few more. It's really worth browsing through in full...poking at 'related patents' is particularly rewarding. You can find tons of stuff that didn't come out, or didn't come out as initially devised. They've all got illustrations, which helps flesh things out. I'll highlight a few of the interesting things I found for you here.

Nintendo:
early NES cartridge
unreleased official Nintendo adaptor for Famicom games(!!)
another NES cart revision
ROB patent with early robot designs. Submitted by Gunpey Yokoi himself.
unreleased keyboard housing patent from Nintendo of America!
early Powerglove patent, with rudimentary Powerglove design...quite different! You have to view the whole document to see the glove or anything interesting.
This isn't Nintendo officially, but is related to the NES. It's a button presser that you roll on the ground, and then it presses A and B for you, alternately. Extremely lame.

Sega:
crazy toy in which you drive a real toy car, mounted on the front of television, on a video track.
Sega VR Helmet from 1992
VMU. Hooray!

Fairchild:
Channel F cart

Konami:
portable arcade looking thing
handheld console - both of the above seem to be LCD systems though, sadly.

Game.com
Game.com patent from Tiger. There are a few more, if you're interested.

Tomy:
Tomy handheld console - seems to be LCD again. 1991.

Supervision:
If you don't know what Supervision is, it's a Chinese GB clone...very odd one at that. See here.
Supervision patent one
Supervision patent two
That Supervision ultimately looked like this.

Sony:
The Pocketstation changed a lot from its initial design:
Pocketstation rev 1
rev 2
rev 3
rev 4
rev 5

As you can see, I was mostly looking at older handhelds and related stuff. There's plenty more to see if you look at the console side, peripherals...there's tons of wacky game lore for you to find.
Source insertcredit