The Curious Engineer

All blogs / Retro consoles

Nicole Express

nicole.express

Nicole Express: Hobbyist video game development, examinations into old consoles, and more!

Retro consolesRetro computingElectronicsGaming

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
193 from 25 Sep 2017 to 25 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (23 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://nicole.express/feed.xml

2026 18

  1. The Mystery of True Love: Mahjong Bakuhatsu Junjouden
  2. Idol Mahjong Final Romance: A Slideshow Disguised as a Video Game
  3. The Brick Game, through the Ages
  4. Composite Video on the NES: Why’s it so wobbly?
  5. How a Konami Cabinet Stays on Target: Target Panic!
  6. The Truth about Sega’s TradeMark Security System (TMSS)
  7. You Need a PC for PC Games: Sunsoft’s Shanghai
  8. Sprite Scaling on the Master System: Building the New on the Ruins of the Old
  9. Blitting the Night Away: Nichibutsu’s Mahjong Koi no Magic Potion
  10. The OSSC Pro Legacy AV Expansion, now with RF
  11. Lost Prototype Found! The Origin of Lock-On Technology!
  12. Pinball in my House, 2026: Alice Goes to Wonderland
  13. What if the Apple ][ had run on Field-Sequential?
  14. Sega Consoles Never Die: The Soggy-1000 and MD3
  15. You Can't Trust the Internet Anymore
  16. Story Follows Function: Mahjong Daireikai
  17. The Last Preset Machine: Yamaha's MR10
  18. Playing Arcade Mahjong at Home? Or is it just a Mirage?

2025 20

  1. Narcissus' Direct-to-VHS Return: MGA's Space Invaders Color FX
  2. How the Segmented Game changed, through the Eyes of Golf
  3. Toaplan v2 and the Birth of Raizing: Sorcer Striker!
  4. Giving the Jakks Atari Paddle a Spin
  5. Composite Mod on the CoCo 2: The UVD Board
  6. Too Good to be First-Party: Coleco's Tabletop Donkey Kong Junior
  7. NES Cartridge Chaos: The Official Nintendo Region Converter and More!
  8. The CV-1000 returns, but at what cost?
  9. The Fuuki FG-3 and Asura Buster: The late 90's say Hello
  10. The Master System Girl: A Console with Cooties?
  11. A Unique, High-Tech (Family) Computer
  12. The ESP-Rainbow: Flatter than a Speccy
  13. Victory Shoot: Hanemono in Toy Form
  14. Using the Apple ][+ with the RetroTink-5X
  15. Taito-tastic: Kiki Kaikai and its Hardware
  16. The Nintendo Family Computer: Forgotten 8-bit Powerhouse?
  17. Why I Stick To 1970s Plug-and-Play Consoles: The Radica Golden Tee
  18. The RCA Studio II Lives On: A Package from Belgium
  19. Reviving a Dead Audio Format: The Return of ZZM
  20. A System For The Sixties-and-a-Half: The Toshiba Visicom COM-100

2024 25

  1. The Epoch System 10: The Pong to End All Pongs
  2. East Meets West: The Legend of Makai
  3. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Cassette Vision
  4. The First Mapper: Jaleco's City Connection
  5. Taking an AxROM to Wizards and Warriors
  6. The Epoch Cassette Vision: Has Games
  7. Is the Twin Famicom Flawed? The Case of Guardic Gaiden
  8. Japan's Real First Console? Bandai's TV Jack 5000
  9. The Bare Minimum Beats: Panasonic's RD-9844 Rhythm Machine
  10. The RCA Studio II in Living Monochrome
  11. The Epoch Cassette Vision: Definitely Not a Pong Console in a Trenchcoat
  12. Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to know
  13. Composite Modding another Atari, because Colors are Hard
  14. The Last Bastion of One-Dimensional Analog Control: Pachinko on the SNES
  15. Yes, You Can Play Duck Hunt Without a Television (but I can't)
  16. A Floppy Disk MIDI Boombox: The Yamaha MDP-10
  17. Upgrading the Atari 130XE Keyboard! DecentXE
  18. Breakout Battle: Epoch vs Nintendo
  19. A System For The Sixties: The RCA Studio II
  20. ROM Hacking in the 90's
  21. Another 1980s Sega 8-bit Arcade Board? Flashgal
  22. Stuck in the Middle with the Fujitsu FM-8
  23. The Last of the First: The Magnavox Odyssey 500
  24. Taito's Mini-Vaders: Why Should Dottori Have All the Fun?
  25. Composite Mod from Scratch: Atari's Pong Sports IV

2023 30

  1. Fixing my Yamaha Electone ME-50: An FM Synthesizer Home Organ from 1986
  2. Nicole's Atari 2600jr Feels the Heat
  3. The Bare Minimum Video Game: The Odyssey 100
  4. First is the Worst: Nintendo's Color TV Game 6 & 15
  5. What Does It Take To Play Truxton?
  6. How can Space Invaders Invade Your Space? The Epoch TV Vader!
  7. Yes, You Can Use Lightguns on LCDs-- Sometimes
  8. Arrangeball Gaiden: A Little Variation with Bandai's Arrange Fever
  9. My Dearest Data East: Why? Gate of Doom/Dark Seal!
  10. A Line at a Time: The Atari 2600, Now with S-Video
  11. A New Ongoing Project: The Satomi/Sammy/Three Star Arrangeball!
  12. The Namco ND-1: Taking 2D for Granted
  13. The Parts-Bin Approach: Konami's Contra
  14. A Dangerous Hybrid: Speeding up the Super Game Boy
  15. Replacing the BIOS on the Book 8088
  16. Bringing the Arcade Home, in 1984: The SG-1000 Arcade
  17. Making Every Ball Count with a Pachinko Data Counter and... React?
  18. Timing Matters on the Neo Geo
  19. SG-1000 Smörgåsbord! Cartridges and RGB
  20. A Review of the RGB Blaster: No Mod, No Problem
  21. Loading screens? On my Super Nintendo? It's more likely than you think!
  22. All Power to the HuCard Slot: The Turbo Everdrive Pro
  23. Sega 3-D Glasses: How did they work?
  24. Another Weird Cartridge! Why doesn't it have a label?
  25. RGB Modding the SG-1000 II! Is it worth it?
  26. Can Pachinko be Skill-based? Taking a look at Hanemono
  27. Every Graphics At Once: Nintendo's Popeye
  28. Vintage Pachinko: Going Back and Forth Across the Pacific
  29. Spinning's a Neat Trick: Megumi Rescue for the System E
  30. A Game Console by Narcissus: The Game and Watch Panorama Series

2022 28

  1. The Sega System E: The Master System Supergrafx
  2. The Sega ST-V's MIDI OUT: A Quick Examination and Failed Experiments
  3. Soviet Game and Watch: The Elektronika IM-32
  4. The Apple II Yellowstone Floppy Interface
  5. A Last Gasp of 2D: The Cave CV1000
  6. Namco System 12: The Fastest Route to the Third Dimension
  7. Tennokoe, or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Save the Game
  8. Famicom Expansion Audio Double Play: Bases Loaded, and the Stereo Mod Revisited!
  9. Converting from the Game Gear to the Master System
  10. The IGS PolyGame Master: A Even More Neo Geo?
  11. HAL Laboratory's Three Arcade Ports
  12. Making the Master System a Master of Speech
  13. The World's Most Popular Arcade Board?
  14. Nowhere to go but down: MicroGraphicImage's Spelunker!
  15. Pinball Takes Buttons: Building a controller for Panic Road
  16. Finishing the job: Fixing the audio on Athena, for real this time
  17. Imitating the Master: The Seo Jin Super Game
  18. The games Nintendo didn't want you to play: Tengen
  19. Mr. Do Proves Our History Is Not What It Seems
  20. What made the NES so interesting?
  21. Donkey Kong's Discount Replacement: Hero in the Castle of Doom
  22. Fact-checking a dead company: Is the Turbo Duo faster?
  23. Genesis from Another World: the Sega System C
  24. Neo Geo Genesis 1 1/2: The Alpha 68K-V
  25. The Teddy Boy Blues Just Don't Stop
  26. The Power of Cross-Marketing: Teddy Boy Blues
  27. The Memories of Z80 Past: Zaxxon and Future Spy
  28. Loopy 2: The Accessorizing

2021 35

  1. Fun With 3 Colors: The Vectrex 3-D Imager!
  2. Isn't she just Misunderstood? The Casio Loopy!
  3. The Pioneer PX-V7 part 2: Laserdiscs!
  4. Fun with Linedrawing: The GCE/Milton-Bradley Vectrex and the PiTrex
  5. The Axunworks Supergun Mini Review, and Overview
  6. Sound of the 2C33: The Famicom Disk System
  7. The Pioneer PX-V7: MSX Over All?
  8. Throw it in the box: The Sega Master System II Power Base RGB!
  9. The Fairchild Channel F: First and Finest?
  10. Pump up the charge: Getting -5V from a 5V power supply
  11. Apple II Audio and the Mockingboard
  12. Upscaling from the Perspective of my own Pixel Game Art
  13. The Pioneer LaserActive and the RetroTINK-5X: A Match Made in Heaven?
  14. The Sega Master System: Third Mark's the Charm
  15. Alf 2: Collision Detection is Hard, Blog Posts are Harder
  16. Holding out for My Hero: The Sega System 1
  17. Collision Detection is Hard: The Story of Alf
  18. Adaptation and Re-adaptation: The story of Pitfall II
  19. Valuestar in the Valuesky: The PC-9821 V13
  20. Review! The Sears Tele-Games Pinball Breakaway
  21. Neo Geo Genesis: The Alpha 68000
  22. A Lot of Effort to be Thrown Away: Sega's Dottori-kun!
  23. The Great Composite Comparison!
  24. Composite Video: Why it was good then, and why you might even use it today!
  25. Review! The GBS Control Firmware
  26. Interlacing, Deinterlacing, and Everything in Between
  27. The Solid State Saturn: Sega ST-V!
  28. The failed heir: The Hyper Neo Geo 64!
  29. How I make graphics for retro systems and retro-styled games
  30. Pirates of the Orochi: Looking into a bootleg arcade board
  31. Atomiswave, or, how SNK learned to stop worrying and love the PC
  32. The Multi-Video System that wasn't Multi-- the SNK Playmore MV0 series!
  33. Review! The Sega Saturn Satiator
  34. Using PAL video output in America
  35. High Speed Coding for the Neo Geo!

2020 18

  1. More Neo Geo CD games!
  2. Will it ever stop loading?! The Neo Geo CDZ!
  3. What did we do to deserve the PC-FX? (and the PC-FX GA)
  4. Trademarks and Region Locks on the PC Engine/TurboGrafx
  5. Nicole gets a real computer! The Microsoft Z80 SoftCard!
  6. Space Ava 201 Digital Release!
  7. The Console That Wasn't: The SuperGrafx CD-- Let's make it real!
  8. Cassette-based multimedia! Can you learn a foreign language using BASIC?
  9. Why did we need an Arcade Card?
  10. What on Earth is a SuperGrafx?!
  11. From the NES to the PC Engine!
  12. Review! The Ugears Hurdy-Gurdy!
  13. Trademarks and Region Locks on the Sega Genesis
  14. The Pioneer LaserActive: Can Sega do what NEC-tendon't?
  15. The Pioneer LaserActive: NEC Style
  16. Making of Aspect Star N: "Making" Aspect Star N!
  17. "Modding" the ToyShock Haunted House!
  18. Modding the Arcade1up Cocktail Arcade

2019 8

  1. Making of Aspect Star N: Coding for the NES
  2. Review! The Toyshock Haunted House Digital Pinball!
  3. A Strange Bootleg for the Super Famicom
  4. Review! The Arcade1up Street Fighter Table
  5. Battle of the NESlikes! Can the AVS stack up?
  6. A simple jailbar fix for the Neo Geo AES
  7. The Canon Cat!
  8. 8-Bit Battle! The Tandy Color Computer 2 vs. the Sega SC-3000

2018 6

  1. Making a Fake Floppy Click
  2. Porting a Project from Concat to Webpack!
  3. Replacing the CPU in a Tandy 1000HX!
  4. Nicole Buys Stuff: The Timex Sinclair 2068!
  5. Of Floppy Drives and Tandys
  6. Fun and 'Fun' With the Atari XE

2017 5

  1. Designing an Adventure Game API
  2. Nicole Buys Stuff: The Apple ][ plus!
  3. Nicole Buys Stuff: The Atari 130XE!
  4. Nicole Express 2.0 Launch
  5. Unused Content in Aspect Legend