Read Only Memo

Hello hello hello! In this week-late-but-worth-the-wait edition of ROM, I'm back to my old hijinks with a meaty interview for one of the most exciting open source projects on the scene right now: ReXGlue, the Xbox 360 recompilation tool. You may have seen some videos of early days PC ports for 360 games floating around in the last couple months.

The plot of The Pink Panther — the original, not whatever the hell they were doing with Steve Martin in the 2000s — revolves around the biggest diamond anyone's ever seen, with a weirdly animal-shaped flaw at its center. The video game Vagrant Story is that very diamond: a totally singular game, flawed yet irresistible all the same.

Here's a thought I'd like to put forward for your consideration: a few years ago, our greatest minds could at the peak of their powers only fathom of a Cool Pope who blasted cigs. Now I'm not saying they were wrong: a Pope who blasts cigs would be cool as hell. But they still wouldn't be as cool as a Pope who loves movies, will meet with trans activists, and thinks ICE sucks ass. I hope he gets to go to a White Sox World Series as Pope and throw out the first pitch.

The plot of The Pink Panther — the original, not whatever the hell they were doing with Steve Martin in the 2000s — revolves around the biggest diamond anyone's ever seen, with a weirdly animal-shaped flaw at its center. The video game Vagrant Story is that very diamond: a totally singular game, flawed yet irresistible all the same.

This issue of Read Only Memo is brought to you by ~ serendipity ~. When the news dropped this week that there was a fresh fan translation of a horror pinball game — just days before I was set to hop on a plane to spend the weekend playing pinball at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo — well, I knew I had my lead story. Nothing else would do! Before this week's main story, though, I've brought back a little bonus mini feature I haven't done in the newsletter for quite some time: Guest.cue.

Let me test out a theory here: If you're into emulation, you're into older video games, ergo you're into old stuff of all kinds. That means you, savvy, good-taste-having reader, will love this spread of photos I took in Tokyo last week at the National Film Archive of Japan, which has a small but lovely set of exhibits from the history of Japanese film. Since you like playing Super Nintendo games this is absolutely your shit, right? Right?? Okay, I'll throw in a pic of some games to sweeten the deal.

Hello friends, enemies, and first-time readers! It's a beautiful Sunday (I'm writing this on Saturday but just go with me here), and there are quite a few of you new to ROM after last issue's deep dive into the Pioneer LaserActive. I'm glad that story was such a hit — it was a real pleasure to put together, and I was hoping people would find the absolutely wild amount of effort that went into that project as absorbing as I did.

Hey there ROM readers! I've got an absolute whopper of a story this issue with a genuine longform dive into the emulation of the LaserActive, plus a bit of backstory on the new fan translation of the Cowboy Bebop game for PS2, plus your usual quick hits on emulator improvements, FPGA happenings and other fan translation progress. That means there's absolutely no more time or space to waste on this intro. LET'S GET TO IT.

This issue of Read Only Memo is coming to you from....... THE FUTURE!!!! While it may look the same in your browser/email client as last issue did two weeks ago, everything's changed. Okay, one thing's changed. Ghost, the lovely publishing platform I use, just launched a big 6.0 update, bringing with it support for the open social web. The fediverse.

HELLO STRANGERS. Let's see if I still know how to work this thing. Apologies for the sporadic newslettering over the last month and change — life's been keeping me real busy, as I've bounced from the east coast, to California's famous Extreme pinball convention, to a weeklong work trip all the way over in China. In between I've found a little time to sleep but not so much for quality newsletter writing. But we're finally making a comeback with a beefy issue this week.