This page contains a lot of technical boring
stuff, but its also got some interesting stuff. This is also the
place where I'll probably put anything I don't know what to do
with.
I've finally gotten my TV Card to record sounds! The problem is that there is little to be recorded in .wav format, since most of the game is songs. I hope to find a program to convert .wav to .mid, or perhaps make the midis myself (I'm musically inclined... ;) The thing that will (hopefully) set my stuff apart from the other sounds and/or screenshots that you might find (that is, if you do find any) is that I'll be using a TV card to record mine. I've hooked my SNES up to a TV card in the back of my computer. This way, the sounds recorded are much clearer than another method commonly used, which I like to call "holdingamicrophone uptotheTVandgettingreallycrappysoundingresults".
I've seen some of the images out there, and there are some nice ones. On the other hand, there's some not so nice ones. I decided that I should probably stick to making my own and perhaps use a few that are donated (instead of stealing images, although it is tempting ;). I use a Mustek flatbed scanner (which is working, finally!) to scan my images.
This webpage looks infinitely better in 800x600 resolution than 640x480 (and 1024x768 doesn't look too good either). You'll also want to turn on the option for playing sounds in your browser (I have a midi in the background for a few of the pages). Although I don't know what it looks like in other browsers and/or browser versions, IE 3.0+ is recommended.
Long long ago (in a galaxy far, far away ;), I made an EarthBound page. It really sucked. Well, maybe not really bad. But it had no content whatsoever, just a few images and a little paragraph about how cool the game is. I became busy playing sports and doing science fair projects, so I had no time to do anything about it.
Then, one day, I recieved an e-mail from someone telling me how much they liked EarthBound and would love it if I would send them some sounds. I decided that I might as well surf around to see if any new EarthBound pages had popped up lately, and look for a few sounds in the process. What I found really surprised and disappointed me.
The only good thing I can say is that there are a lot more EarthBound pages since I put my original one up. Back sometime in early 1997, when Ms. Saturn's page seemed to be the inspiration for all the other EarthBound pages, my page was one of about five. Sadly enough, Ms. Saturn quit her page sometime in November of '97.
The main (and by far, the most ANNOYING) problem on nearly every page I found was that of broken links. 9 times out of 10, there were a handful of links on someone's page that didn't work.
Another
problem I found was overall poor quality in some pages.
The square of color surrounding a non-transparent gif
makes it look as if a two year old took some glue and
stuck the picture on the page.
Monstrous files (like huge images and background sounds)
were placed on some pages, making them hard to navigate
and, a lot of the time, simply eyesores (in the case of
background sounds, earsores).
Pages were very rarely updated within the last 2 weeks. I believe I found one (EarthBound 64: The Official Unofficial Site) that was updated within the last week, and I think there was another that was updated a month before my viewing it. Other than a handful, most sites seemed to have been abandoned or forgotten. Hopefully my e-mails woke some of them up.
Image and sound quality was alright sometimes, but a lot of the stuff I found wasn't very high quality. Someone had taken the time to make a few midis (I don't know who, but I appreciate them). Two of them that I really liked (ebhotel.mid and ebstore.mid) were made well, but the others sounded pretty bad. Not to be putting down all the hard work of whoever made them.
I noticed all this and decided that I should make an effort to revive EarthBound on the web. I began work on an all new site. I try to keep it regularly updated, keep the number of files and file sizes down, make it easy to navigate, and overall, make it more enjoyable than frustrating :)
I've found that,
although LinkExchange may seem to be the cure for what ails your
hit counter, its not. I've gotten one heck of a lot of people
visit my site, but only a handful (not even ten!) had been from
LinkExchange! A link on someone elses page will boost your hits
dramatically, as will a link on any good search engine.
If you would like to help me (and yourself) out, e-mail
me. We can trade
addresses. I don't trade banners anymore, its become quite a
hassle. You can use mine if you'd like, but I only use text A
link to your page will be placed on my Links
page (if your site is EarthBound oriented). If your site has some
interesting content, doesn't look like its held together with
duct tape, and is updated regularly, I'll put in some good words
for you too.
I was running around, looking at other EarthBound sites, when I realized that almost all of them had a guestbook. I, of course, felt stupid not having one (and I wanna know what people think of my site). At first, I signed up with LPage (or is it Guestworld? Same difference? I'm not sure). During the creation, I realized how hard it is to customize a page well. Then, to my absolute horror, I checked my guestbook for the first time and there were ads all over the thing! I found out about a little company called Plaza Hotel (no, not a hotel chain...). They have free guestbooks, and the best thing is, they rock! Its incredibly easy to set up and customize, even easier to edit information already in there, and best of all, there's only one ad on the page! If you want a guestbook, this is the place to go.
I've been into computers for a long time. This interest really took off when I built my own. My computer is a bragging right for me, in some respects. Don't ask why I'm telling you this...I just have the sudden urge to talk about my computer. Its a:
AMD K-6 266 (I upgraded! This rocks!)
64 MB RAM (I made the horrible mistake of mixing DRAM and SDRAM,
though...)
20x CD-ROM Drive
3.1 GB Hard Drive (Convenient for all those huge EarthBound
images and sounds)
SB 16 Sound Card and 32 bit onboard sound card
33.6 Modem (I rarely get connection speeds above 28.8)
4 MB S3 ViRGE Video card
SCSI controller card (Slow, flaky...came with the Mustek Scanner)
Mustek Scanner (Useful for scanning EB pics)
WinTV TV tuner card (I can use this to record crystal clear
sounds and take some screenshots)
I know, its all waaaay outdated now. Better than my 486!!!