Gentle Giant is, without any doubt, my favourite number one rock band.

 

First, the cheapest and the most massive, was Dendy (Taiwan-made illegal clone of NES/Famicom) and its numerous even cheaper clones.

Second, for the elite, if you will - Sega Mega Drive (known in America as Sega Genesis). It cost more and so most of us could only dream about it.

Third, SNES - Super Nintendo. It was for czars and ministers reckoning its price and prices of original cartridges. So I can't remember any living person that I knew of who had it at home.

 

Now that there're emulators, I played it all, and so on. Still, I wanted to make something for Sega on my own.

Thanks to GINCS Visual Studio, it is possible to create at least something of this kind.

 

And that's where I went wild. Now let me share it with you, go worldwide.

 

So...

Here is the short quiz in its initial form. Just black screen and questions. And my favourite writer Robert Sheckley at the end, the man who probably had no connection to the band in whichever way imaginable,  except that I like his works and GG's works at the same time. Unreleased GG's melody for unreleased Robin Hood movie, as well as Mr. Sheckley's image makes the entertaining program somewhat creepy and crazy. That's perhaps fine, I thought:

 

Here is the same quiz but with b/w photos (I had much problem with converting color photos and even some with b/w ones because of console's limitations and GINCS Visual Studio's bugs):

 

Then I tried to fill some GG music into the maximum size of 4 MB of standard Sega 16bit cartridge/rom-file.

First, I've put two instrumentals:

 

Second, two pieces with vocals:

 

 

Finally, I've spent three or four days to create the one and only in the whole universe of NonGoodGen (non-standard Sega Genesis game-files) GG ENCYCLOPEDIA on Sega 16bit! It's as surreal, weird and light-hearted as it can be. A lot of irony and comic mood is seen through its pages. However, there are NO programs of a kind as of now yet.

And the first one happened to be of Gentle Giant:

 

I did not try it on real hardware, but they all work perfect on emulators. If you have something like Mega EverDrive and the console, try it - it'll probably work. I see no reasons why it couldn't. 

You can download all 9 GG-related programs (bin-files) that I have made so far http://romhacking.ru/load/0-0-0-297-20" rel="nofollow - FROM HERE !

 

 

Everybody interested in using those programs can easily download them absolutely for free in one click  'GG Jewels' is the folder consisting of all respective roms.

You can download all 9 programs (bin-files) that I have made so far  http://romhacking.ru/load/0-0-0-297-20" rel="nofollow - FROM HERE !

 

To use them one has to have Kega Fusion, Gens or any other Sega Mega Drive / Sega Genesis emulator. Or the respective flash cartridge and the video game console itself. I tested every rom on Kega and Gens - yet not on real Sega console. Set the Input/Controllers options in the emulator to your taste, because in every program you will have to press any of the buttons A, B or C of original console controllers to change the screen, turn the pages on screen.

 

GG Encyclopedia contains several secrets, not shown in the video. Some secret pages (mostly, not GG-related, at all) as well as some pics inside the file never used by the program.

Other roms do not have any secrets, believe me.

 

I am not a programmer as such, which means I know a lot about various programming languages (including Forth, LOGO, C--, Modula-2, Ada, etc.) and so could probably write a book of comparisons. But I do not have enough skills, no experience in real programming. So, asm-s are beyond my limits, anyway.

 

As far as I can realize, true masterpiece for Sega may only be made by a team of dedicated developers. I do not have such a team. I am not a painter, a decorator, too impatient for that kind of work. There have to be tens of backgrounds, smooth animation. That's not for my nerves. So, Gen-oriented C or Basic won't work for me, too.

 

GINCS Visual Studio is IDE for GINCS. Nothing like Delphi or Visual Basic - rather closer to Visual C++ :-).

The IDE was made by a Ukrainian programmer, whom I do not know and have no connection to - so my words are not an ad. Info on it is basically written in Russian on several Russian-tongued sites, like, e.g., this one:

http://pscd.ru/news/1886-studiya-dlya-sozdaniya-sega-igr-gincs-visual-studio-180.html" rel="nofollow - http://pscd.ru/news/1886-studiya-dlya-sozdaniya-sega-igr-gincs-visual-studio-180.html

There you can download the latest, it seems, version 1.8.2

The IDE has English language interface, menus, whatever, everything is in English.

 

Honestly, the IDE and GINCS itself offer VERY limited opportunities. First, I have troubles with full-screen color photos, they simply did not show on screen as such. Only one photo mysteriously happened to do well full-screen. I read everything carefully on how to convert them before loading to GINCS' internal converter, etc. - I have failed. Second, you can't stop the melody immediately, it will play to the end once it started playing. Third, the built program won't work with X, Y, Z buttons and won't identify which button is pressed. It's all about ANY BUTTON of the three button controller. Then, images on screen only change after you press that any-button. No animation, no automatic change of frames, nothing like that.

 

Here you can see the games created in GVS:

http://pscd.ru/forum/index.php?/topic/85-igry-dlia-smd-sdelannye-pri-pomoschi-gincs/" rel="nofollow - http://pscd.ru/forum/index.php?/topic/85-igry-dlia-smd-sdelannye-pri-pomoschi-gincs/

 

Again, slide show may be only manual. But, yes, you do not have to deal with coding. What the program really looks like in terms of assembler code is none of programmer's business. That's great. But then, you would hardly like to create tens of games in GINCS. It's about several adorable pieces, probably. Like what I did with it.

 

Good luck!

 

I hope one day I'll be able to create a masterpiece game involving Gentle Giant. As of now I've only made what I've made.

 

Yes, of course, you are absolutely right! Again, simple is the keyword here... But it's better than nothing.

 

Here is the final program recorded on video:

You can download all 9 programs (bin-files) that I have made so far  http://romhacking.ru/load/0-0-0-297-20" rel="nofollow - FROM HERE !

This is excellent dude! Fantastic work! More please!!!

Today I can present you two more programs for Sega 16Bit video game console.

Unfortunately, the first of them, the 8th chronologically, is exclusively in Russian, as it is called "Dzh Dzh In The Land Of The Bolsheviks" and tells a little of my personal experience and the overall Soviet/post-Soviet experience concerning Gentle Giant (the band, of course).

Since I had already made a (textual) video about similar things in English, I've tried to do something in Russian on the topic for Sega.

The video contents are almost identical, so you can watch it to see what the "game" is about.

The Russian-tongued program: 

The video in English mostly about the same things: 

Then I simply poured some philosophy dressing on. What if every rock band is being depicted through Gentle Giant's grandeur? Like, every band is a junior relative to GG 

Also, if Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock may recommend something else than their works, why couldn't GG do the same? Sort of "GG Recommends, GG Presents...". 

Last two paragraphs explained the sophisticated title of the newest product.

Some of my favourites among the rarer known prog bands:

I am sorry for the links to download, that did not work. I wrote, "try these" - and the links didn't work for some time.

You can download all 9 programs (bin-files) that I have made so far http://romhacking.ru/load/0-0-0-297-20" rel="nofollow - FROM HERE !

 

 

Not as eccentric and ecstatic as those about Gentle Giant. My love to Queen remained in the past, for most, at last.

 

You can download this program http://romhacking.ru/load/0-0-0-298-20" rel="nofollow - from here . For free.