![]() The webpages back then really didn’t look like much. For those that didn’t want to use IE, there were Netscape Browsers. Then Windows 98 came along with Internet Explorer dial-up modems were starting to reach 56k and if you were lucky you knew someone that had an ISDN or DSL connection. I could find little else to use those other OS’s for. It hadn’t been long before this that most teenagers like myself were accustomed to using computers using the text-based DOS we tried out GUI OS’s like Windows 3.1 and 95 but if you wanted to play the cool games, DOS was where it was at. It would end up creating a market bubble, which when that burst had the standard economic fallout of various companies going under. It is when the general public started to really jump into the internet thanks to HTML, web browsers, JAVA and so on. The late 90s was a pretty amazing time as far as technology goes. So I am going to take the opportunity with this blog to go back through my NUON experience, starting around 1998 up until 2001. ![]() With so much information floating around out there on a daily basis, just as much is forgotten as is learned. The internet itself is a much different place now compared to 14 years ago, the amount of information has increased drastically as have the capabilities of what can be done online. By the time I got back in 2003, there wasn’t any reason to restart the site so I moved onto other things. I put Castle NUON on an intended hiatus back in 2001 because I left to do religious missionary work in Brazil as an energetic 19 year old but a short time after I left, the whole NUON gig fell apart and disappeared into the memory hole. In retrospect it might seem a little silly to get so worked up about something that ultimately failed but it was a fun ride and it gave me some experience with HTML coding, tracking down news stories, tracking down developers for interviews and more that I have used in my work for sites like Arcade Heroes. ![]() ![]() Called Castle NUON, myself and two or three other guys online took it upon ourselves to promote a product we had no personal financial stake in – we weren’t investors in any of the companies involved, we just loved video games, especially from underdogs. I ran a blog (before they were called such good ol’ Geocities!) about all things NUON, reporting on news and other tidbits in regards to the technology. I recall it pretty well as I was a NUON ‘Fanboy’ for a few years. Vocal Partnering, HarmonyMML2D - Full Featured 2D Graphics LibraryĢ-D Drawing Functions (Line, Rectangle, Ellipse, Arc, Polygon, Bit-blit)ġ6 Million Colors, Alpha Blending With 256 Levels of TransparencyĢ16 Million 32-Bit Multiply-Accumulate Operations per SecondĨ64 Million 16-Bit Multiply-Accumulate Operations per Secondġ3.Remember NUON DVD players that could play a few games? No? Maybe? My guess is that price had something to do with it Most people shopping for DVD players could really care less if it can play games or not and aren't willing to spend $229 for a machine with features they are never going to use, while gamers go with the traditional consoles (since Ps2 and X-box can play DVDs as well anyway.) Still a hard core group of Nuon people is hanging on and will make sure Nuon doesn't go away for the foreseeable future at least.ģ2-Voice General MIDI Wavetable SynthesizerĪdvanced Karaoke: Reverb, Chorus, Echo, Flange, Key Control, Most Nuon players also come with the Video Light Machine built in (which is one of those programs that gives a light show when you play music.) There are only twelve Nuon games out there, A-Maze, Tempest 3000, Iron soldier 3, Freefall 3050 A.D., C rayon Shin Chan (Korea only,) Ballistic, Space Invaders XL, Monopoly, Myst, The Next Tetris, Bust a move 4, and Merlin racing, and about 11 more which are unreleased but have found their way onto the net and can be downloaded or traded for. Unfortunately Nuon never really caught on and Nuon players were only produced for a few years. So in addition to high end DVD playback features like smooth, seamless scanning of DVD video, 20 X zoom, action capture, angle view, smart matrix, and snap shot, Nuon DVD players have the added benefit of playing games. Basically after VM decided that it in no way could challenge Sony's dominance in the games market they took their technology and licensed it out to several different companies who incorporated it into their DVD players. NUON is basically what's left of the unreleased Indrema L600 console developed by VM labs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |