21st Century Digital Boy

(via Taleel)

(with pictures!)

Last night, me and Clockwork (who’s been commenting here occasionally) spent a couple of hours getting Linux on an old DBox2 (warning: German) he managed to get his hands on. The DBox is a set-top box, basically any of three DVB receivers manufactured by Nokia, Sagem and Philips and is being distributed mainly by Germany’s largest PayTV provider Premiere.

The process of getting Linux to run on it involves connecting it to a PC with a null modem and (!) a LAN cable and getting it to start up in a debugging mode. From there, you can overwrite the flash memory chip that holds its operating system (which is programmed in, I kid you not, Java) with basically anything you like. Seeing as how the CPU is a PowerPC, it didn’t take long for Linux to be ported. There’s a couple of different GUIs for it, although from what I’ve seen Neutrino (German again) is the most usable of them. The final feature set involves being able to watch streaming video via LAN, recording video from the TV tuner to a hard drive via LAN, mp3/ogg playback and a picture viewer. Basically, a much more full-featured home entertainment device than what it starts out as.

The problem is that getting the DBox to kick into debug mode in the first place is a rather crazy task. There’s numerous ways on how to do it, and which one you need to use depends on what manufacturer your DBox is from, which manufacturer the flash memory is from and how many flash chips there are in there, and possibly also the conjunction of Saturn’s moons in relation to which way a sack of rice is falling over in China.

They all have the same basic idea - reset the flash memory to factory state, start and fatally interrupt (by pulling the plug) a software update, disable the flash chips on bootup by grounding a certain pin and finally remove the write protection so you can slap on whatever you like. The problem is that how you can reset the flash memory depends on your manufacturer, when you should interrupt the software update depends on what software is on there and that actually grounding the pin on the flash chip doesn’t seem to work everywhere. We got good results by using the TV tuner’s shielding as “ground”.

Seeing as how neither of us had the slightest clue how exactly to do it and where to start, I must admit that I’m rather happy with how this turned out. It took us about ten to twenty minutes to find out how to erase the flash, about half an hour more until we got to the point of making the update fail, and from there it was a trip of a mere one and a half to two hours until we finally managed to disable the flash chips and get into debug mode. Oh, the sweet joy of glorious victory.

Somewhere in between there, we had to replace a failing multiway power connector in my room, because just when we had the glorious idea of making pizza, the on/off switch on it started flickering and happily crackling. This is not what you want to see in equipment that’s connected to a 230V mains line and four or five kitchen appliances.

Once we had our pizza, we made a backup of the original contents of the flash chips. This is important particularly because the flash chip also contains so-called µcodes, which are necessary for DVB reception in some way or another. From then, it was a matter of downloading an image of one of three different “distros” of the DBox Linux port, grabbing a small utility that would do most of the work for us and basically clicking “next” a few times and then noticing that the first distro we downloaded would spontaneously reboot without any proper explanation during bootup - which, by the way, was accompanied by the LCD on the dbox displaying a fake DOS prompt and the TV output a Windows Vista boot screen. Awesome.

So we flashed another distro on, booted it, set it up, accidentally selected Polish for the interface language, spent fifteen minutes finding the Language menu and switching it back to German via a rather laggy auto-switching interface and re-uploaded the µcode files. The “languages” this thing supports are crazy, too. four different dialects of German (Bavarian, two Swiss dialects and proper German), Dutch, English, French, Portuguese (but no Spanish), Italian, something weird and slavic-sounding, Russian and a bunch of other stuff.

From there, we were pretty much done and experimented around with it mounting NFS exports, tried the picture viewer and audio player, tried the video player, found out that attempting to play wmvs with it deadlocks the DBox, rebooted - something we generally did a lot in these few hours. A LOT. My recommendation: if you get a dbox and ever plan to use Linux on it, install a hard power switch into the mains lead so you don’t need to crawl around and pull and re-plug the plug all the time. Clockwork said he plans on doing that, too.

Either way, performance on this thing isn’t exactly mindblowing - loading a 640×480 image via the LAN (which also only does 10Mbps half-duplex even on the DBox2), scaling and displaying it does take a few seconds, as does a lot of other stuff. It sure as hell can’t keep up with a modded XBox in terms of media performance, but then its hardware is also a whole lot weaker than an XBox. The CPU in this thing is a blazingly fast 66MHz PowerPC, with 32 megabytes of RAM and 8 megs of flash memory for the operating system. I still have no freaking clue why this thing contains 32MB of RAM to supplement such a low-power CPU, but I guess it’s to get the original Java OS to work properly at all.

Related project to come: setting up a Linux-based server with VLC streaming so Clockwork can connect this beast to a TV and properly use it. This will also serve as a Linux introductory course for him. I don’t think that’s going to make a nearly as interesting blog post though, but we’ll see.

I hereby declare Majora’s Mask to officially be my favorite Zelda game, ever. I’ve just picked it up properly instead of just snooping into it, and it surpasses even Wind Waker for me. I had never even begun to imagine that the Zelda series was capable of creating such a dense, dark and oppressive atmosphere and sheer “what the SHIT” scariness.

Unlike Ocarina of Time and even Wind Waker, time and its passing play more than just a gimmicky role: the time you have to do anything in the game is very limited - three in-game days of about eight minutes each. The KER-TIME-TRAVEL concept from OoT is back, but takes some more getting used to. You can easily travel back in time, but if you do, most of your actions in the world are reversed as well. Important items and the like remain with you, but you lose all of your disposable equipment (bottle contents, rupees, arrows, bombs, EVERYTHING) and people have never seen you before. This means that to get to the absolute end of any quest, you only have about half an hour.

The collectible masks from Ocarina of Time are back as well, but just like the time, they’re not just a gimmick at the side but a central part of gameplay. Many masks are items you get from completing quests and need for others, and three of them allow Link to change shape (accompanied by a horribly disturbing little animation including faces distorted in pain and horrible screaming) for extra abilities.

The plot starts out right after Ocarina of Time, with Link travelling far and wide in an attempt to find his lost companion Navi (HEY! LISTEN), searching for the friend that accompanied him all the way through the trials that were Ocarina of Time, never leaving his side once until the very end, when she finally sacrifices herself to help Link overcome Ganon. A bitter end, and Majora’s Mask keeps it up. The game is overflowing with all kinds of depressing, horrible and outright wrong events, which come back after the next time travel no matter how hard you tried to set them right. All of the heroism seems horribly, depressingly futile when you go back in time and realise for the first time that except for a few very small things nobody will ever noticed, all of your deeds and attempts to rectify the wrongs have never happened, when you walk around the world and notice that nobody remembers you, when you see all of the bad things you worked so hard to help with back where they were, as if you’d never been there.

And then, the game makes you go through that again. And again. And again. And again.

I really have no clue what the writers were on, but dear god it must’ve been horrible.

Which is just what I love about the game - it’s more emotional, more serious and deeper than just about every other Zelda game I’ve played. And I’ve played all but the CD-i ones.

Here’s hoping that Twilight Princess will go down that road again. From last year’s E3 trailer, it looks like it just might.

As an added bonus, let me pimp Machinae Supremacy again - their song Missing Link was inspired by Majora’s Mask.

Crash Bandicoot is probably one of the oldest franchises that found their beginning on Sony’s consoles - even on the first PlayStation, the two 3D jump’n'run games that started the series enjoyed great popularity. Using the slightly crazy Crash as its protagonist, the games have held their footing to this day. The last major PS1 title with the Crash Bandicoot name was Crash Team Racing, an action racing game in the vein of Mario Kart or Diddy Kong Racing. Crash Tag Team Racing as the newest incarnation continues the concept of racing games with zany humor on the PS2 as well as the XBox and the GameCube.

Plutonium, Explosive Chickens and Kamikaze Chimps

Radical Entertainment chose a background setting for their game that already is somewhat reminiscent of Diddy Kong Racing - the game is set in a large theme park which is split up into five differently-themed areas and a central hub area. The separate parks are the caribbean pirate world Mystery Island, the dinosaur island Tyrannosaurus Wrecks, the Science Fiction area Astro Land, the Egyptian desert and pyramid landscape Tomb Town and the fairy kingdom Happily Ever Faster. Each of the parks again consists of a central hub area that gives access to three racing tacks each, contains some minigames and a bunch of other minor goals. The latter start as simple as collecting coins to buy new outfits for characters, speed past the opening of hidden shortcuts on the racing tracks and finish at locating (and getting to) energy crystals that will unlock new vehicles and previously-inaccessible areas of the themed parks. Aside from the three racing tracks, there’s also an arena to be found in every of the five parks, which can be played in multiplayer or in a stunt mode. The game also supplies a nice overview of current missions in the pause menu so you don’t lose track of all that stuff you can do. Added to the mission overview are sometimes greatly amusing hints that can be gotten from the various characters. Many of the missions are limited to banally collecting coins and energy crystals, others are a bit more complicated and have specific goals, for example finding a canister of plutonium that one character needs to get his new vehicle started - this canister is, as is to be expected of plutonium canisters located in theme parks, just lying around. You only need to find a way to where it is. Another example for the missions would be buying a ballerina costume for one of the characters because he (rightly so) thinks he’s horribly ugly.

The areas that are explored on foot basically play just like the Crash Bandicoot Jump’n'Runs did back then: you walk around, smash crates to find coins and explore the park while looking for energy crystals and the keys for the different theme parks. At the start of the game, only Mystery Island is open, and every theme park hides a key that will unlock the door to another one. Many characters can be talked to; that way, playable ones sometimes give new missions or just more or less stupid comments. Random park visitors will only yield the latter. As a small bonus, there’s various places in the park that can be used in one of various ways to trigger a short movie - usually gag reels or dramatically silly scenes that end Crash up dying in one of more than forty variously cruel ways. All of these movies can, after being discovered, be accessed from the main menu as well. The only major difference to “normal” jump’n'run games in the on-foot part is that there is no limit of lives - you can die as often as you want, the game will never be prematurely over and thus put you back to the last time you saved. If you die, you instantly get put back to the point from which you took the final step into your doom.

The racing parts are complete standard fare, but with a few interesting extra features to spice things up a bit. While cruising the courses, you can’t only pick up powerups that will yield explosive chickens, dynamite-wielding chimps or homing fireballs to get rid of annyoing competition with, but also spontaneously merge with any of your competitors. This results in a combo similar to Mario Kart Double Dash - one of the two merged characters becomes driver, the other one takes a gunner position. Places can be switched at will; even in single player mode, you can just hand control of the vehicle to your temporary computer partner and concentrate on clearing the way with your character dependent turret. Sadly, the screen is a bit unwieldy in racing mode - there is a rear view mirror, but it’s hard to make anything at all out in there, and there is no gauge that shows what powerup you’re holding - thus, you always need to take your eyes off the road for a moment to check what your character has in his or her hands. Depending on how you fare in the race, there’s money coming in at the end of the three-lap rush; there’s additional bonuses for enemies you take out, extra prize money for the first three places and energy crystals for the winner.

The race tracks are also playable in one of five modes with varying goals. Crashinator places fixed targets on the track that you need to ram as many as possible of during one time-limited lap. Race is, as the name suggests, an ordinary competition with any of the eight characters against the other seven. Fast Lap requires driving a single lap with as short as possible a time. The Rolling Thunder mode puts you on track with a random character in gunner position and counts how many other characters you blow up with the turret, and Hit And Run has you firing your turret at moving off-track targets.

Graphics

As befits a Crash Bandicoot game, the graphics are colorful, not to say blindingly so. The characters as well as levels willingly use comparatively few polygons to further underline the comic style of the graphics, the textures usually have razor-sharp color changes and generally large, flat colored areas. Animations are fluid, detailed and also comically overdrawn, if sometimes a little low in numbers - for example Crash, as the lead character, sports only a mere three different idle animations for when you leave him standing around a bit. In general, the game has a consistent style though, and usually goes for simplicity in place of overdone detail. Additionally, there are neither noticable jerkiness nor graphics bugs - while the graphics are not astonishing from a technical nor stylistic point of view, they are done well and consequently in both areas.

“Ze violence, it is vonderful!”

The most notable part about CTTR’s sound are the voiceovers: characters have excellent, if often silly, dialogue in jump’n'run mode. Hopping around on the heads of random park visitors or even other characters, beating them or otherwise abusing them, they respond with usually amusing comments (I think I spent WAY too much time just jumping on random people’s heads just to hear their reaction), and the characters also have various great oneliners to deliver during the races. The translation is also done thoroughly and turned out well - not always true to word and meaning, but always as amusing as the originals and without any screwups of note.

The game’s music is… well… unique. Similarly to probably all other games of the series, Tag Team Racing has what could best be described as “typical” video game music - catchy, short and simple melodies with simple rhythms underneath. Instrument choices are often on the silly side, which fits the game nicely. Put short, the music would probably drive deaf men to madness within minutes if the game didn’t go along with it so well. Sound effects are, just like the music and voiceovers, silly but fitting. The suddenly-stopping clucking of the exploding chickens, the screaming of the kamikaze chimps and the nice explosions are a good soundtrack to the zaniness going on on the screen.

The English language version of CTTR is also included on the DVD and, in my opinion, has even better voiceovers - particularly Ebeneezer von Clutch, sporting a saxon dialect in the German translation, is “Ze German” in the English original - including his best Indiana Jones Nazi English with heavy accent and occasionally “ja!” thrown in. The language used by the game is determined by the PS2’s language setting - if you want to hear the English voices, just set the PS2 menu to English and start the game. I suspect the XBox and GameCube versions behave just like that, although I can’t verify this theory for lack of either.

Things I Learned From Crash Tag Team Racing

Should I ever urgently need plutonium, it might be a good idea to just take a look around a theme park. And jumping on random people’s heads might not make me a better person, but provokes amusing comments. And it’s crazy fun, just like the rest of the game. The humor is a bit too puerile at times (”my god, it’s full of fart jokes”), but usually decent and bizarre in a good way. I couldn’t try out the multiplayer modes because I only own a single PS2 controller and CTTR could not be moved to accept any of my three PS1 joypads even as present. I guess the multiplayer adds more replay value though. Buy or rent? From my point of view, a definite Buy.