News Article: New Portable NES Released by Fire International
News Date: 03/23/2005
Source: Press Release
Works with cartridges from all regions and standard NES peripherals.
Fire International today announced the release of the new BLAZE POCKET FAMI console throughout Europe and the United States
The BLAZE POCKET FAMI is a new handheld and is fully compatible with all NES and FAMICOM titles from Europe, Japan and USA. Consumers will now have access to the range of NES titles and the recent Retro revival will make classics such as the original Mario Bros. games, Final Fantasy, Zelda and other well known NES title available to old and new gamers alike.
The compact design features a 2.5" TFT screen, d-pad and standard and rapid-fire button configurations. The BLAZE POCKET FAMI also boasts the ability to function as the original console and connect to a TV with the included cable, with the option of connecting 2 NES compatible Joypads into the console.
In Europe, the BLAZE POCKET FAMI includes a 72 pin adaptor to allow the bigger NES cartridges to connect as well as the smaller Japanese Cartridges, and is fully compatible with PAL and NTSC titles.
Managing Director of Fire International Ltd, Jason Cooper said, "Most of today's console gamers were brought up on the NES console, with its range of classic, playable titles. Gamers will now be able to experience the classic gameplay again and experience them in a whole new way through the BLAZE POCKET FAMI's handheld design. NES games are widely available through many retro games sites and eBay. The POCKET FAMI gives retro-gamers a taste of gameplay from the 80's"
Contact Fire International for further details on the BLAZE POCKET FAMI. The BLAZE POCKET FAMI is available now from
http://www.xploder.net. Worldwide shipping can be arranged.
![[Image: hw022400001.jpg]](http://www.planetgamecube.com/media/hw022400001.jpg)
Okay, legal: No. The site seems to be down right now, probably because of high traffic. But how awesome is this? Not only is it a handheld but you can also use it as a console for two player games! I wonder how much it costs and how long the batteries last... now if it could only play SNES games...
...I just thought of something; What if you put in Duckhunt and hooked up the gun in to the second controller port... could the tft screen read the actions of the gun?
And even if it could, would you want to? :D Seems like a very akward way to play Duckhunt.
I have an GBA already. :)
They already RELEASED the Game Ax lazy :D.
Lazy, you should know that the TV does NOT read the motions of the light gun. It's physically impossible for it to work that way, at all. The gun reads the flashes of light the TV shoots out. Every time you click, the entire screen flashes white except for the targets, which flash in the form of a box. I haven't been able to actually see it myself, but somehow the individual targets flash slightly differently from each other. The gun doesn't send out any light at all. It has a camera built into the barrel.
Anyway, I've had to give this speech a number of times as it's a very common misconception, but not only can the TV not read anything from the outside, it's not designed to send data back to the NES anyway. It's only designed to RECIEVE signals.
That said, the question is, is the image clear enough for the light gun to see it properly? Well, probably so, but really I have to know if the image is large enough. You may have to hold the gun right UP to the screen.
Oh yes, whether you get this, a Game Ax, or the other 5000 illegal clones of the NES floating around out there, well, with portability I think, the important thing is to make sure the hardware is designed to the exact standards of the NES. Reverse engineering is tricky, but the NES has been around forever and it's pretty simple, so I would assume there's no real risk.
DJ/ At what point did I ever say I dont understand how a Zapper works? I guess I should have said "Would a tft screen be compatible with the Zapper".
Here's exactly how it works:
In TVs there is an "Electron Gun" that looks like a big light bulb. The function of this electron gun is to use electricity and heat up an element, and boil off electrons. A set of electro-magnetic coils then repel and direct the flow of these loose electrons at a very high speed towards the inside of the TV screen. This is all happening behind the TV tube glass. These electrons are being generated in the back of the TV tube, and are shot directly out towards you. What stops most of these loose and high speed electrons is the front of the tube which is made up of very tiny capsules of phosphorous material that momentarily give off light as they are hit by these loose high speed electrons. You can actually see the tiny capsules that look to be red, yellow, and blue. Your monitor is rated at xx dots per inch, which means that there are xx of these clusters of red, yellow, and blue capsules (called pixels - short for picture elements) in each linear inch of the front of your computer monitor. If you look close enough, you can actually see these pixels.
Some of those loose high speed electrons make it past the phosphor screen and come straight at you.
Inside the Nintendo Zapper Gun or any such device is a "detector". The Nintendo Zapper Gun does not actually shoot anything out, but it actually gets hit by the TV's bullets that are the loose high speed electrons which are generated in the back of the TV where it gets really warm.
How does the Zapper Gun know where you aimed? The electrons are boiled off. The magnetic field on the back repels and accelerates the electrons towards the front. And then, there are guide electromagnets on the side and the top/bottom of the tube. With precise timing and monitoring, these guide electro-magnets can direct a very fine beam of loose electrons to each of the red, yellow, and blue pixels. The back electro-magnet determines how much energy that electron has when it hits the particular pixel. By controlling and mixing the amount of high speed electrons going into each of the primary color pixels, different colors can be made. This beam is controlled to sweep from left to right horizontally, then go down one row, then start the horizontal sweep from the left to the right again, and so on. The exact location of the beam at any given time is known by the TV circuitry. When you pull the trigger on the Zapper Gun, the Nintendo system, then reads this information from the TV circuitry, and checks to see if the gun has been hit by an electron beam or bullet. If the Zapper gun has been hit by the electron beam, that means you were aiming at the right spot when the sweep was going through, and you have a direct hit. If the zapper gun is not hit by the electron beam, that means that you must be aiming elsewhere on the screen, and it is considered a miss.
The reason it will not work with LCDs or TFT's or Plasmas, such as those used on Lap-Top computers or big screen TV's use a different technique to get light out of pixels. They do not shoot high-speed electrons into your face, which is what the Zapper Gun needs to function - and so the Nintendo Zapper Gun probably will not work on your big screens or lap-top. A zapper will not work with the 'Blaze Pocket Fami'.
So, in closing, go soak your head.
Or you could just get this:
Man, best console name ever.
Totally the best name ever!
I like where it says "Mystery" in the top left-hand corner of the box. :D
Hahaha, I never noticed that before! BRILLIANT!
Actually, electrons aren't being shot at your face. Our eyes see light, not electrons. Rather, the electron gun hits the screen, the inside of which is coated with a substance that glows when hit with electrons. This glow is light, and that light is then shot out through the glass into your optical organs.
Here's the deal, electrons can only be fired in a vacuum, such as the vacuum TUBE inside, for example, your friendly CRT screen. Put air in there, the electrons get scattered everywhere and just end up ionizing some stuff.
The phosphors on the screen simply glow, no electrons manage to "get through" as you put it. The back magnet in the tube determines one direction, the front determines the other. It sweeps the beam horizontally, then the front one shifts it down a level, then it sweeps again. The color is determined by what pixel the magnet is hitting. The strength of the beam determines how much of a glow you get, from notta to maximum.
A black and white screen was coated in a phosphor that only glows white, so the only thing they could change was how much it glows.
A color screen is arranged with sections for blue, red, and green, over and over again. Some screens had an arrangement of 3 circular dots in a triangle, but most today use a rectanglular pattern without a triangle setup. The only thing it needs to do is aim at the red phosphor location for red, blue for blue, and so on. As you can imagine, this requires a LOT of precision. Hence, older TVs had a tint control, which shifted the beam ever so slightly in different directions until it was alligned correctly. Well, actually they all have it, but then it was a dial and now it's digital.... you know....
Point is, you can't see electrons, they can't be fired in a reliable direction through air, and the phosphors, when hit, release light, they don't knock electrons towards your face.
So, that in mind, if the pixels release light no matter what the method, then why would the light gun care?
Finally, as I said before, the Nintendo system has NO idea what the TV is doing at any one time, at all. You can play the system with NO TV attached at ALL. Newer displays DO provide data feedback, which is nice so a system can know exactly what it's hooked up to and display accordingly, but the NES system, RF, and A/V hookups did NOT have such a communication system. The signal went straight to the TV, and never came back. Remember, a closed circuit electrical connection may require a closed loop, but something like outlet power that just goes straight from the point of greatest resistance to the dirt below you? That doesn't need a closed loop at all, just a path of least resistance, like lightning (well it does need a solid path TO the end goal).
PS: I've played Duck Hunt on a wall mounted LCD screen before.
Soak YOUR head!
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/tv.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/plasma-display.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lcd.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/jumbo-tv.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/projection-tv.htm
This one's for light guns specifically:
http://stuffo.howstuffworks.com/question273.htm
It lists both Duck Hunt's method and the method used by games with a lot more targets here, which is different. It also states how, without having any idea what the TV is doing, it is able to synch it. It's based on what the NES already knows, since the screen synchs itself to whatever signal it recieves. You were pretty close. I THINK Duck Hunt uses a combination of the two in order to figure out which duck got shot... That's the only thing that can explain why the duck targets do the box thing and how it can do the other part...
http://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm
Edit: In retrospect lazy did get it mostly right, excepting MAYBE the method that Duck Hunt used (he mentioned one I wasn't familiar with and I assumed he meant it one way when really that wasn't specifically stated by him), but mostly he got the last part of how CRT displays work.
Anyway, the only real problem after that is, well, do LCD and plasma screens draw the image in the same line by line fasion as a CRT screen? Well, for compatibility with the standard RF signal, yes, yes they do. The only other issue is speed of display and refresh rate I suppose, but LCD and plasma screens sold as TVs for home use pretty much assuredly are up to CRT screen standards.
Hong Kong Businessman: Great Tomato Android? Giant Tormented Anus? Game Theory Admiral!
DJ/
The zapper senses stray electrons that make it through the screen, that's how it works. That's how it senses if you got a hit or not. The whole reason the ducks have a white box around them is because that is the brightest color the NES can send so that those electrons (that we see as light) can be sent to the gun. If the gun sees dark, you missed. If the gun sees white, you hit. It knows which duck you hit because there's two layers of ducks. One in the foreground, one in the background. There's also a foreground of trees which gives you more points if you cap a duck behind them. The game just has to keep track of it's layers to know where and what you shot at.
No, you cannot play duckhunt with the TV off. You can turn the NES on, but you will never hit anything because there's no information being sent back to the gun.
If you played duckhunt on an LCD screen then you must have some pretty kick ass LCD screens over there in the Land of Make Believe. Duckhunt wont work on projection (rear or front) TV's either because there's nothing being sent back to the gun. It's not just light that the gun is looking for, it's actual frequencies from the tube it wants. It will not work with LCD's, it will not work with Plasmas, it will not work with TFT's, it will not work with projection, it will only work with cathode ray tubes because the other techs didn't exist yet when Duckhunt was designed!
On higher end more modern games that use guns, the guns have electronics that actually communicate to the game and screen. That's why with the super scope you had to actually have that little box on your TV. In some games you can see your target dancing around because it's basically a controller at that point using a merc switch or a kind of radar ping. The target is here - true, the target is here - true, player shot at something - true, player hit enemy - false, player shot at something - true, player hit enemy - true, etc. So the more modern games might work with LCD, TFT and projection though I doubt it because all the big screen arcade cabinets for shooting games (like the Jurassic Park two-seater cab) use cathode ray tubes shooting in to a magnifier and shot on to a mirror. So you're actually shooting at the mirror. While the smaller up-right cabinet just uses a 20 inch tube TV. There are no arcade games that allow you to use a gun-like-device that do not have a cathode ray tube screen
But yeah if you can make duckhunt work with anything other than a tube television you can crown yourself. But otherwise soak your head and stuff.
READ THOSE LINKS LAZY! You can't see electrons "as light"! I specifically stated exactly how it works, and those links back me up. Just READ them! A TV doesn't send stray electrons "you see as light". You see LIGHT as light! Electrons are too small for light to bounce off of them! They can only excite the phosphors to release light!
Look, I'm open for evidence to show I was way off here. If I'm totally wrong, I'll say so, no problem. I'm not too attached to any scientific data I ever pick up. But, you have to check out my links there. They specifically state exactly how a CRT television works as well as how a light gun works. Just check that out for me.
One time my NES lightgun broke and you could shoot at anything [on or off the screen] and it would register as a hit.
My friend told me that his friend could shoot stuff if he pointed the gun at a lightbulb. I don't know is that's true or not, though.
That sounds a bit off...
Oh yes, lazy, you misunderstood me. I was saying the NES doesn't care if the TV is on in the sense that what the TV is doing doesn't matter. In other words, if you are playing Super Mario Brothers, you can play it just fine. But yes, you do need the TV to be on for the gun to see the light (LIGHT, not electrons).
From what I can gather, the Duck Hunt game determines which duck you hit by exactly WHEN it is able to see the white box when you click the trigger. It certainly doesn't read electrons. It can't.
You cant see electrons as light? How do you think a TV works DJ?
Wait is this a joke? Is this like, you are basically trying to get a rise out of me?
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/tv.htm
The electrons don't get past that layer, well unless you turn off the TV and rub the screen with your hand. What they do is excite the phosphors coating the screen and the phosphors glow. You see that glow, not the electrons.
Quote:The terms anode and cathode are used in electronics as synonyms for positive and negative terminals. For example, you could refer to the positive terminal of a battery as the anode and the negative terminal as the cathode.
In a cathode ray tube, the "cathode" is a heated filament (not unlike the filament in a normal light bulb). The heated filament is in a vacuum created inside a glass "tube." The "ray" is a stream of electrons that naturally pour off a heated cathode into the vacuum.
Electrons are negative. The anode is positive, so it attracts the electrons pouring off the cathode. In a TV's cathode ray tube, the stream of electrons is focused by a focusing anode into a tight beam and then accelerated by an accelerating anode. This tight, high-speed beam of electrons flies through the vacuum in the tube and hits the flat screen at the other end of the tube. This screen is coated with phosphor, which glows when struck by the beam.
Quote:A phosphor is any material that, when exposed to radiation, emits visible light. The radiation might be ultraviolet light or a beam of electrons. Any fluorescent color is really a phosphor -- fluorescent colors absorb invisible ultraviolet light and emit visible light at a characteristic color.
In a CRT, phosphor coats the inside of the screen. When the electron beam strikes the phosphor, it makes the screen glow. In a black-and-white screen, there is one phosphor that glows white when struck. In a color screen, there are three phosphors arranged as dots or stripes that emit red, green and blue light. There are also three electron beams to illuminate the three different colors together.
There are thousands of different phosphors that have been formulated. They are characterized by their emission color and the length of time emission lasts after they are excited.
It is important to note that when they refer to "the radiation" they are talking about what energizes the phosphos to release light, not what radiation they emit.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/eye.htm
That link explains exactly what your eyes are designed to detect. I THINK it also covers things that can make your rods and cones "go off" without visible light. However, as I explained, electrons can't just be fired through the air and be expected to take a straight path any real distance. They can only do that in a vacuum.
1.) Electrons.
2.) Strike the phosfor material.
3.) Emit light.
4.) "You can't see electrons "as light"!"
5.) "How do you think a TV works?"
6.) *DJ soaks his head*
Yes, that's exaclty what I said lazy. Not sure what you are getting at there.
Maybe you are changing your argument?
You see, you first argued that the electrons firing from the electron gun actually "made it past" the phosphor layer and you literally SAW the electrons. I corrected this by pointing out that the electrons do NOT make it past this layer at all. Rather, they excite the phosphors and the phosphors release LIGHT, NOT electrons at all. There is no "electron signature" in the light either to let you know where it came from. The gun has a light sensor, but there is no way to tell that it was electrons that caused the phosphors to release light at all. All it sees is the light, not the electrons.
Which goes back to where this started. If the only thing the gun sees is the light, then it doesn't matter how the display goes about producing the light. It could be using an LED based front or back light system (LCD screen) or using an array of LEDs (jumbo trons) or exciting small chambers of plasma (plasma screen). Since the end product is exactly the same, light, then it doens't MATTER. The only thing that matters is that the display unit uses the line by line drawing method.
Here's the thing. The only information light can carry is wavelength. A lot of light is "brighter" and only a little light is "dimmer", but the only information an individual ray of light can carry is the wavelength. It can't and will not carry any signature indicating it "came from an electron". Now, a spectroscope does USE the spectrum of wavelengths a star or something gives off to indicate exactly what the substance that released it is made out of, but that's another thing entirely.
Again, eyes can ONLY see light. We don't actually "see" anything we ever look at, just the light that bounces off of it.
You two are so cute when you fight.
Aren't you the one who's always fighting with lazy?
This isn't really a fight anyway. I'm just trying to get lazy to understand something, but I think he's... overreaching or something... I dunno...
When do I fight with lazy? Usually he makes some long post with a little attack at me in there somewhere, but I never take them seriously.
When I debate i usually dont resort to name calling unless it's it's a person i dont know, then I have to.
And you've been wrong with just about everything in this thread, DJ. I've been egging you on because you post more and more trying to prove your point when I already explained how it's done.
Quote:When I debate i usually dont resort to name calling unless it's it's a person i dont know, then I have to.
Well I think the fact that you "resort" to name calling every other time when you're NOT in a debate makes up for that. ;)
...what?
Look, I just POSTED exactly how a CRT screen works. Maybe I misunderstood what you mean and you meant exactly that, but that IS how it works. I've posted the evidence showing I'm right. If you wish to prove me wrong, then the burden of proof is on you now. So, show me the evidence.
And also I just wanted to point out this. Remember when we had a little debate about how the pit system on optical media worked? You believed that simply two height levels was not enough to convey all the data, whereas I knew they could and in fact that's what they did? Well, here's a breakdown of that for ya too.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cd3.htm
