iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Oh my god check out this control layout from AZTEC (1982, Apple II)

Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Okay y'all gotta get on this, available at Don Quixote. It's got a US "Nutrition Information" label on it insinuating you can buy these in the States as well...?

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

NDL OCR is amazing!!! It beats the hell out of everything else.

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I HAVE HEARD OF THIS TECHNQUE BEFORE!!!!!!! A guy was talking about it back in maybe 98 when I was interning at a certain video game company, he mentioned the quality of the frames would be complete ass but it would be an interesting thing to try

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Paging @dark1x.bsky.social for a future Digital Foundry comparison (Tass Times in Tonetown C64/Apple II/Apple IIGS)

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Check out some 3-way comparisons! The jump from 8-bit to 16-bit was huge.

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Becky Heineman's TASS TIMES IN TONETOWN source code just got dropped at Kansasfest, the big Apple II meetup. Contains source for C64, Apple II 8-bit and Apple IIGS. Contains a higher-res version of the "Becky getting decapitated" image in the IIGS source! archive.org/details/tass...

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

So the story I heard was that it was originally gonna be a "very accurate" and immaculately researched thing, and then one day a certain someone was like "OK I'VE GOT IT, THE MAIN CHARACTER IS NOW A CHINESE NINJA NAMED LO WANG!!!!" and here we are. That's just the 90s rumor mill tho

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I was trying to explain Shadow Warrior to a younger guy at work and was like "here, let me just fire up this YouTube video with all of the guy's lines" and both of our jaws were on the floor after about 15 seconds, it's way worse than I remembered it

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I worked at this company, they went from Toy Fighter to Dreamcast Ultimate Fighting Championship, that might be FD Gaiden

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Reposted by Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地

Maytera Marble @mayteramarble.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

NEW FAN TRANSLATION: English Translation of "I Want a Room in Loopy Town!" for the Casio Loopy! Work odd jobs, buy furniture and decor, and celebrate holidays and the changing seasons. You only have one year until you... how wll you spend it? #CasioLoopy romhack.ing/database/con...

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

That corn picture might be my favorite picture of all time

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

HELL YEAH Arco Tower represent. First image, that two-story break room with the stairs -- that was where they kept the binder that had all the fan mail from the USA that was sent our way. I don't think you were allowed to smoke in that room.

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

90% sure they based Soul Edge / Calibur on this commercial

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Oh btw that pic is from the Osaka Pokemon Center. Here's a few more pics and I'm sorry I look insane in all of them, it was 1999 and I was a lot more easily excitable.

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Oh lol that's me I remember buying a cool Ash hat here. I gave it to my grandma back in the States and she wore it basically every day until she died. She volunteered with a ton of kids and they were always like OH MY GOD WHERE DID YOU GET THAT HAT

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

@mayteramarble.bsky.social Just asked me "So basically foreigners / people without Japanese credit cards can't buy Z-rated games anymore?" and...unless I'm reading this wrong, yes?

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I don't know how Japan ever signed off on this. One gotcha people are calling out: you can buy a CERO Z-rated game in cash in a shop with no issue. To buy a Z game online you need to have a credit card, which some people still don't have (I needed a Japanese CC to download the free RE4 VR upgrade).

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Regarding Sony's disc-continuation: What I will settle for in 2026 is a FREELY SHAREABLE LICENSE. There may be nothing on a Game Key Card or the majority of PS5 discs, but at least I can hand it to my friend and they can play the goddamn thing.

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Reposted by Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地

Maytera Marble @mayteramarble.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

The Toaster has landed safely in America

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Oh I've never seen this, how do you trigger it!?

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

One of the things VF1 takes advantage of EXTENSIVELY is the fact that they can instantaneously pull a 3D mesh off of the ROM and slam it on the screen per frame. There is no actual finger and hand animation, they are literally swapping different meshes out 30 times a second.

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Bonus: here's a Model 2 texture sheet. Eyes were layered on as decals, and colors are driven by a luma LUT.

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

...everyone was basically a pioneer, making it up as they went." Fun fact, the Dreamcast version of VF3 only had square textures, so 512x256s were reduced to 256x256s.

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

...they took the high-fidelity CG models made by ASPECT Co. for the VF CG Portrait Series on Saturn, did front- and side-projection texturing. I work with a Japanese CG guy in his 60's, and he's like "Oh yeah, this is totally legit. There was no established workflow for doing any of this...

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

So this is arguably not insane, given how this is likely being done in 1995 and these are the most convincing realtime humans that have put on a screen so far (Toy Story was 95, and we know how THOSE offline rendered human characters looked). From what I can deduce...

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

I've been doing some archaeology on 90s CG boards and I'd like to talk about the completely unhinged texturing of Virtua Fighter 3. VF1 was literally NO texturing; all detail was in flat shaded geometry. VF2 was beautifully painted textures (16-shade grayscale colored with a LUT). VF3 is this: 🧵

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

This rules. The TurboGrafx CD/PC Engine CD version is bilingual, I tore that shit up

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Reposted by Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地

Maytera Marble @mayteramarble.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

A lot of people think Mario’s full name is “Mario Mario,” but that’s not right. That’s the Japanese name order. Here, we’d call him “Mario Mario.”

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Check out this actual texture from VF3, literally a photograph of a shoe from a "whatever" perspective. Reminder: these were the greatest graphics on the planet in 1996

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

The craziest shit is that VF1 doesn't use textures for anything, it's just brute force quadrilaterals, VF2 is beautifully painted textures that are actually tinted grayscale, and VF3 texturing is an unhinged "take pictures of the high poly CG models and planar project that onto the meshes"

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Sounds like you need some ZONE ZERO energy drink

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Reposted by Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地

Joe Wintergreen @joewintergreen.com · 19/06/2026

if you're not in the know, hourences leaving epic is the reddest red flag of all time

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Okay folks, I have checked my catalogs and I cannot find any indication of what the hell this stick is or what it once was. PS1 connector, The back is entirely custom squishy vinyl so I can't find a maker. The POPEYE is an obvious sticker. What IS this?

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Colin Williamson - 奈良番外地 @colinwilliamson.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Ever have one of those mornings when every vertex in your hair mesh gets offset by a factor of 1,000 meters

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