Kosmic Vine Glitch New Super Mario Bros.

Kosmic’s Vine Glitch Tears Versus Super Mario Bros. Apart After 40 Years

By

Kosmic Vine Glitch New Super Mario Bros.
Kosmic spent another long session mapping leftover oddities in Versus Super Mario Bros., the 1986 arcade cabinet that copies most of the original NES game while changing a few rules, timers, and memory habits. Growing a vine in the wrong place after a death still queues an extra plant for the next screen. Near the top of any vine Mario loses control and auto-climbs; that state leaves a flag set so the next transition (death works best) sprouts a second vine wherever the surviving player happens to stand.

Read More
Texas A&M Cyclocoper UAV

55 Pounds of Horizontal Rotors, Texas A&M’s Cyclocopter UAV

By

Texas A&M Cyclocoper UAV
Texas A&M’s Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory has spent years turning a century-old flying idea into something that can actually hold still in the air. Latest result is a 55-pound uncrewed aircraft whose four rotors spin like sideways paddle wheels instead of overhead discs. A recent flight-test video from lab director Moble Benedict shows the machine in controlled hover, using RPM and pitch-phase control on all four cycloidal rotors.

Read More
Zero Star Homebrew SNES Game Assembly

Zero Star Climbs Out of Two Years of Pure SNES Assembly

By

Zero Star Homebrew SNES Game Assembly
Inkbox spent two years writing every instruction of Zero Star by hand in 65c816 assembly so a Super Nintendo from 1990 could run a dungeon crawler of his own design. The result sits on itch.io as a 129-kilobyte ROM you load in Mesen or bsnes, pay what you want, and play tonight. Mountains of an imagined far east rise in shifting mazes. You climb them, throw talismans, and cut through flocks of jungle fowl until the counters on screen run out of room.

Read More