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In this issue:
	Game Informer Mag Features Turbo!
	Expansion port coolness.

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From: netwrx@attbi.com
Date: Thu Feb 27 06:10:43 EST 2003
Subject: Game Informer Mag Features Turbo!


Hey TML:

Did anyone else catch the article in the latest Game Informer Magazine on
the "Top 10 Best games for the Turbo Grafx"?  GI has a section in their
magazine every month dedicated to retro gaming.  This time it is the Turbo
Grafx that has the spotlight.  Its a great article and gives fine praise to
still one of the best 16 bit systems to to hit the market.  I recommend any
fan of the Turbo pick it up. You can find it at any Game Stop Store. aka
Funcoland.

Regards,
netwrx


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From: chris_covell@yahoo.ca
Date: Thu Feb 27 21:20:18 EST 2003
Subject: Expansion port coolness.


Hi, folks.  Well, recently I continued a Turbo
tradition that I started over ten years ago: namely,
messing around with the pins on my PCE's expansion
port to get some cool effects out of games...

Heh, of course I don't recommend doing this if you
value your PCE systems; you could very easily damage
them.  But, a long time ago, I discovered that by
touching together (using wires or a screwdriver) the
pins on the expansion port of the Turbo/PCE, you could
do some really cool things with the system.  For
example, the pins on the right side (looking at the
connector) tend to do interesting things with the
graphics in games, such as disable sprites or the BG,
change the colours wildly, and so on.

Near the middle of the expansion port, I've found that
you can freeze games temporarily, and enable the
really cool effect of the game screen being split into
4 small quadrants, with the game playing at twice the
speed.  Finally, the left side of the expansion port
appears to do things with the CPU, most usually just
crashing the game.

HOWEVER, I have achieved some really cool effects in
some games by doing this.  Just last weekend, I tried
this out with Ghouls 'N Ghosts in my SuperGrafx, and
managed (after many minutes of undesirable effects) to
kick it into some kind of debug map-editing mode!  I
kid you not.  The game froze with all sprites staying
where they were.  But now, there are a bunch of hex
numbers on the left of the screen (8 rows of 6 digits
each), and two cursors on-screen that could be
controlled by the joypad.  By moving the cursor left
or right, you could scroll the map around along the
level.  Holding down A or B while moving the cursor
speeds up the cursor.  Holding down select while
moving the joypad (L/R or U/D) progressively reveals
or hides the PC-Engine background and sprites (in
back) and the SuperGrafx background and sprites in
front, respectively.  I found that holding down select
and pressing B laid down a large mess of sprites that
appeared to be the opening door at the end of the
level.  Much to my dismay, pressing Start returned to
the title screen...

I took a few pictures and even recorded some footage
of this debug mode on my VCR, just for posterity's
sake.  Anyway, this was really cool and it made my
weekend.

Anyhow, other interesting effects that I have achieved
over the years have been: for games that operate in
the horizontal resolution of 320 pixels, I could
switch the resolution back to 256 pixels.  And, in
R-Type for the Turbo, I once managed somehow (by
playing with the expansion port) to kick the game from
the title screen all the way to level 5 (the long red
corridor) with infinite lives.  Again, I kid you not.

So, if you have a Turbo or PCE that you don't worry
about too much, try out the expansion port with some games!

=====
Chris Covell (chris_covell@yahoo.ca)
http://www.zyx.com/chrisc
Solar Wars Homepage!

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