Media Archaeology 2020
ENGL 603: Media Archaeology January-April 2020 1:15-4:30 Tuesdays 3 credits Darren Wershler (Concordia University) Concordia Department of English course page Course Description What is media archaeology? As Jussi Parikka describes, it is a subfield of media history that scrutinizes contemporary media culture through investigations of past media technologies and creative media practices. Media archaeology takes a special interest in recondite and forgotten apparatuses, practices and inventions. Media Archaeology also encourages opening up and tinkering with the “black boxes” of media technologies, in order to develop a relationship to them that is not based on being a “consumer” or “end user.” At an historical moment when our own media technologies become obsolete with increasing rapidity, the study of residual forms and...
Forensics: Genesis 2 with original Mega Amp
A brief but interesting teardown of a Sega Genesis model 2 containing one of Ace and Villahed's original Mega Amp boards
Weeknotes: 29 March 2019
This week, we opened up the Smash Box, an all-button fighting game controller made just for Smash games by the team at Hit Box.
Weeknotes: 22 March 2019
This was a very busy week at the Depot. We have four projects on the go: a database; the Wii-modding project; a new project dealing with Sega Genesis audio mods; and a Super Smash Brothers Melee project.
Arcade11 2019
Depot denizen Abbie Rappaport took her project on Super Smash Bros. Melee to the 2019 edition of Arcade11, the annual indie and experimental videogame showcase at Concordia. Here's her account of the experience.
The Game Boy’s Second Life: A Conversation with Retro Modding’s Olivier
The Residual Media Depot team recently had the pleasure of visiting Montreal-based Retro Modding. With Olivier, the founder and owner, we discussed entry into the modding scene, the political economy of hardware modding, and the nuts and bolts of video game modification and preservation.
Forensics: Genesis 1 component-mod
What makes this Sega Genesis “High Definition Graphics” model 1 unusual is that it has a full set of gold-plated AV jacks added to the rear, for component video (YpBPr) and stereo sound. In this post, we open it up to see what's inside.
Emulation at the Residual Media Depot
An emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system to behave like another. At the Depot, we're interested in emulation for a variety of reasons.
The Platformization of Nostalgia
This is how business is done in the age of the Stack. On a global scale, Nintendo is concentrating decades of public interactions with its games and game systems into the narrowest possible channel, in order to shut down cultural practices that they don't like, and to extract maximum profit.
Forensics: Super Famicom component-mod
A forensic examination of the Depot's Nintendo Super Famicom, which has been modified with the addition of ports for composite video, S-video and component video, while leaving the functionality of Nintendo’s “multi out” connector intact.