Posts

A Major Space Rocks Update — and the Soundtrack on Vinyl and CD

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Space Rocks has received a major update, and its most significant addition is something entirely new for Hypseus: an online leaderboard. If you have not played it before, Space Rocks is my free arcade-style space shoot-’em-up, made for Hypseus. You control a small ship in a wraparound playfield, destroying waves of rocks and hostile spacecraft, collecting power-ups and trying to survive for as long as possible while building the highest score you can. The basic idea is inspired by the old vector-based space games, but Space Rocks is an original game with its own graphics, sound effects and full soundtrack. Taking the high scores online Until now, the Space Rocks high-score table has been confined to the machine on which the game is running. The new online leaderboard makes it possible to compare scores from different players and systems in one place. When an eligible score is achieved and the game can reach the leaderboard server, Space Rocks offers the player an opportunity...
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Play Galaxian 3 with a Sinden Lightgun on a Real PlayStation1

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This is Galaxian³ running on a real PlayStation, from an authentic disc, with four Sinden Lightguns being used at the same time. It is made possible by my new Green Analog firmware for the SindenPS PlayStation1 adapter. The firmware was created for one very specific purpose: allowing Galaxian³ to be played with lightgun-style controls on original hardware. Galaxian³ is a rail shooter, but it was not designed for a lightgun. Instead, it supports Sony’s original PlayStation Analog Joystick: an enormous twin-stick controller resembling a flightstick. Sony’s later Dual Analog Controller could also impersonate the Analog Joystick using it's "green-light" mode, a feature dropped by the DualShock controller which replaced it. The Green Analog firmware presents the SindenPS adapter as that same green-mode controller type. It translates the Sinden lightgun’s position into analogue-stick coordinates, so moving the gun moves the game’s crosshair. The PlayStation version of Galaxia...
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Cops - [Official] - Out now for Hypseus

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On the 19th of May 2026, I published a preview to YouTube of something a lot of people have been waiting for.  COPS. The 1994 arcade FMV police shooter and driving game, originally released by Atari, and developed by Nova Productions. COPS for Hypseus is available now. COPS is a 1994 arcade game based on the American TV show of the same name. It’s a full-motion-video police game with shootouts and car chases; all presented in that very specific early-90s arcade FMV style. The game includes “Bad Boys” by Inner Circle, the theme song from the show, along with the rest of the music used by the original machine. The original arcade machine was a pretty unusual beast. Like many FMV arcade games of the period, it used a laserdisc for the video footage. But COPS also had a CD-ROM drive to play commercial music, including the TV show’s theme song. So it wasn’t just a lightgun game. It was a big, sit-down arcade attraction, with video, music, steering, shooting, and a cabinet that was tryin...
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Auto Race for Hypseus

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I just released "Auto Race" for Hypseus.  My faithful recreation of the first ever fully electronic handheld game. Auto Race is a handheld electronic racing game developed by Mattel Electronics in 1976 and released in 1977. It’s widely regarded as the very first handheld electronic game to use only solid-state electronics with no mechanical moving parts aside from its control switches This project is a faithful recreation of Auto Race, built for Hypseus, attempting to recreate the original gameplay as closely as possible. If you want to try it, you can download it for free from my itch.io page at https://therealwidge.itch.io/auto-race-for-hypseus If you like it, you can support me and the development of my future projects by making a donation, either when you download from itch.io, or at my ko-fi page : https://ko-fi.com/widge Support for Hypseus is available from https://discord.hypseus.net
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Borf Launcher for Hypseus

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  Borf is a free launcher for Hypseus on Windows, built to make working with Daphne and Singe LaserDisc-style FMV games easier and more enjoyable. Hypseus is a powerful platform, and it gives you a huge amount of flexibility. But as soon as you start building a library of games, all running from batch scripts, the practical side of managing them can start to feel more complicated than it needs to be. I made Borf to bring everything together into a single, clean interface that makes organising and launching games feel straightforward again. With Borf, you can manage your games in one place, add preview images and video snaps, organise titles with categories, and quickly filter larger collections as they grow. It’s designed to feel comfortable whether you’re just getting started with Hypseus, or you already have an established setup and want something more convenient to work with. Borf focuses on the everyday experience of using Hypseus, helping you spend less time managing files and...
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PLATOON (Nova) - Fully working shooter for Hypseus! (Official Announcement) Now available.

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When people talk about FMV light-gun games, the conversation almost always begins with the same familiar names. Titles from companies like American Laser Games defined the genre in the early nineties, and for many players, they still represent its high-water mark. But running quietly alongside those well-known releases were a handful of projects that never quite found their audience. Games that existed on the fringes of arcades, or never properly escaped development at all. One of those games is Platoon, developed by Nova Productions. Nova's Doomed FMV Arcade Shooter Platoon was conceived as a full-motion video light-gun game in the same mould as its contemporaries: on-rails action, live-action footage, and enemy encounters driven entirely by pre-recorded scenes. The setting clearly evokes a Vietnam-era conflict with dense jungle terrain, ambushes from foliage, and enemy soldiers throughout. Although the game itself never explicitly names a location. And despite sharing its title w...
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Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold – Now on Hypseus with Two-Player Co-op!

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In the early 1990s, American Laser Games carved out a distinctive niche in arcades with their live-action laserdisc shooters. Unlike traditional sprite-based games, these titles dropped players straight into a western film, complete with real actors, branching scenes, and the thrill of a quick draw. Among their most ambitious productions was Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold , released in 1992 as a sequel to the original Mad Dog McCree . The game sends you across deserts, towns, and trains in pursuit of Mad Dog’s hidden Spanish treasure , all while his gang does its best to stop you. Gunsmoke and Treasure Maps Like its predecessor, Mad Dog II uses full-motion video and light-gun controls. Every decision is made by your trigger finger: hit the right target and the story continues; hesitate and you’re history. Early on you “Choose your guide” from a set of eccentric companions, each leading you on a slightly different route to the treasure. But no matter which path you take, Mad Dog himse...
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How Long Does the Sinden Lightgun’s Capacitor Take to Discharge?

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When working on a Sinden Lightgun, whether you’re fitting a trigger mod or doing other maintenance, you’ll usually hear the same warning: be careful around the big capacitor in the handle . That capacitor powers the recoil solenoid, and when fully charged it holds around 20 volts . If you accidentally short its terminals with your hand or a tool, you could get a sharp (and very unpleasant) shock. But that raises a sensible question: how long does it take for the capacitor to discharge after you unplug the gun? It’s easy to say “wait before you open it up,” but what does “safe” actually mean in practice? I decided to put it to the test. Setting Up the Test To measure the discharge rate, I connected my multimeter directly to the capacitor’s terminals and watched the voltage over time. Since the capacitor was already flat, I first needed to charge it. Plugging the Sinden into my PC and enabling recoil in the Sinden software sent the voltage climbing almost instantly. Within just a ...
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Tierras Salvajes - NEW shooter for Hypseus! (Official Announcement) Now available.

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If you're a regular viewer of my YouTube channel then you must already know about Picmatic and their seminal full-motion-video arcade lightgun opus, Marbella Vice . If not, then maybe you should subscribe so you don't miss out in future! 😉 Marbella Vice was Picmatic ’s stylish crime drama that looked like it wandered out of a telenovela and into a shooting gallery. It was one of three such LaserDisc -based arcade games that the Spanish company developed, inspired no doubt, by the work of American Laser Games with their better known lightgun classics such as Mad Dog McCree , Crime Patrol , and Who Shot Johnny Rock . Tierras Salvajes , is of the same breed. It's Picmatic 's third and final foray into this world of live-action LaserDisc based shooters. This time set in the fan-favourite mythic American West, complete with saloons, shootouts, and sweeping plains where lawmen and outlaws settled things with bullets and bluster. The year is sometime after the American Civil...
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Super Mario Bros for the NES is NOT a Retro Game!

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Hey, everyone, it's good to see you. Thanks for joining me. Oh, wait. Sorry.  Obviously I can't actually see you. And you're not physically here with me. Those are just expressions, right? We use them all the time, even though they don't literally mean what they say.  That kind of thing can be confusing sometimes. And that's exactly what I want to talk about today, a common mix-up in the gaming world, specifically the way we use the word retro to describe our favourite old games like  Sonic the Hedgehog  and  Super Mario Brothers . And here's the thing...  those games aren't really retro at all .  Let me explain why. Super Mario Bros. When people talk about games like Sonic and Mario, they often call them  retro  because they're from the past and bring back memories. But just because something is old doesn't make it retro. That's a common misunderstanding.  And it all comes down to what retro really means By definition, retro means " imitati...
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Replacing the Battery in Your 8BitDo SN30/SF30 Pro Controller

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If you’ve had your 8BitDo SN30 or SF30 Pro controller for a few years, you might have noticed that the battery just doesn’t last like it used to. I ran into exactly that issue with several of my own controllers, so in late 2022, I made a YouTube video documenting the process of replacing them. This blog post is meant as an accompaniment or alternative to that video with advice to help you identify and source a compatible replacement battery. Even if you can’t find the original model anymore. The Original Battery The stock battery inside many 8BitDo SN30/SF30 Pro controllers is a GJ451860 lithium polymer (LiPo) cell, rated at 3.7V and 480mAh . That model number is important, and not just for identifying the battery. It’s actually the key to finding a compatible replacement. At the time I made my video, it was impossible to find a battery with that serial number. You may have more luck today, but if you struggle I can help. Just read on. Understanding Battery Model Numbers Here's the...
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