Useful information for all my tubing endeavors. Writing things down in the form of an explanation is a good way to remember them.
N64 games use .miniusf or .usf fles, SNES games use .spc, PS1 games use .psf or .minipsf. There are plugins for Winamp that decode these files, can be found via the usual suspects. With the correct plugins installed, open the soundtrack or files of choice, and switch to the Nullsoft Disk Writer output plugin. Configure as you please then press play in Winamp and the program will write your soundtrack to .wav. .rsn format SNES music throws an error when you try to convert it to .wav, open .rsn's in 7zip and extract the individual-track .spc files.
Avoid any old "MP3 writer" plugins, transcode to MP3 with another program if needed; the native Winamp plugins I tried for MP3 were limited to 2kbps at 22kHz. Uncompressed music takes up a lot of room, so just convert what's needed for the video. The only issue for my video process is that the wave files don't lend themselves to being put in playlists with album art... but damn does the Earthbound soundtrack sound amazing in .rsn.
This script takes all of the files in a folder, gives them the same base name and appends a number to the front. file_001 is the oldest file, and they count up to a maximum of 999. Running the script should be as simple as putting it into notepad and saving the result with the .ps1 extension, but you may need to run PowerShell as admin and Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted to keep Windows from yelling at you.
$baseName= Read-Host -Prompt "MAKE SURE ALL FILES ARE IN ONE FOLDER. Base Name"
$fileExt = Read-Host -Prompt "File Extension (no period)"
ls *.$fileExt | sort LastWriteTime | %{$i=1;}{$a = $i.ToString("000"); mv $_.name "$($baseName)_$($a).$($fileExt)"; $i++}
PowerShell is pretty useful but very unintuitive, it's like trying to program with ten different libraries that you aren't familiar with.
| Site | Usage | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A/V Artifact Atlas | Video editing resource | A list of analog video artifacts, good inspiration for visual effects. |
| Killer List of Video Games | Coin-ops info | |
| Arcade History | Coin-op video games info | Viewing all info requires an account. Catalogs useful stuff like chips used in coin-ops and game scoring systems along with the usual pics, years, designers, etc. |
| MobyGames | Detailed video games info | Very accurate and good for classic games. Lots of niche games are present with incomplete info. Has game descriptions, release dates, platforms, credits. Don't count on it for complete info though. |
| Arcade Italia Database | MAME-focused game info | Lists MAME ROM and CHD names for various games, along with general information. Very useful if you need to track down MAME files (to legally dump from your own arcade boards of course). |
| Shmup Wiki | Shoot 'em up info | Wiki for shooting games, some pages have very detailed info about release dates, platforms, scoring, but many are incomplete. |
| The CRPG Book | Computer RPG info | A chronology of CRPGs written through a series of many short reviews and some essays. Probably the best work of game history so far, and it's free. |
| Kikizo | Footage and news archive | One of the first game news sites that had video, a great repository of old press conferences and game coverage. Helps to understand old zeitgeists. |
| Data Driven Gamer | Historical experiment | A guy trying to play every notable game in history and draw a tree of influences. |