Nicole Express

ASLR improves security by randomizing your age, sex, and location

New blog post! A what-if scenario where we try to see how a home computer designer might've dealt with the field-sequential color television, had the Korean War not stopped that standards' rollout. Enjoy! https://nicole.express/2026/the-apple-that-wasnt.html

brutal way to call someone stupid: "you're the last game released for the pc engine cd in japan"

New blog post! Supporting RF video directly on the OSSC Pro... is it as good as it sounds? Taking a look at the new Legacy AV attachment! https://nicole.express/2026/a-legacy-of-radio-frequency.html

pro-tip: save computing power by using 2xsai instead of dlss5

hearing reports that Claude Mythos was able to achieve a 5.51s time in the Atari 2600 game Dragster

all you need for a concert are two SN74689As

Today's "Random Game Saturday" is one I might've done before, but I don't keep track of this-- Alien Crush for the TurboGrafx-16! I actually like this one more than Devil's Crush, despite the lack of scrolling

New blog post! Sprite scaling, on the Master System? That's right, but don't get too excited... https://nicole.express/2026/zoom-zoom.html

forced to use claude code at work? stick it to "the man" by saying please and thank you to claude, thus wasting precious tokens

I assume the long-term goal of Epic Non-Mega Games is that Tim Sweeney types into his computer "gork, make me a new fortnite. 10/10 very popular trending on artstation" and then they have no developers or anything

New blog post! Looking at Nichibutsu's strip mahjong epic, Koi no Magic Potion. What made this company stand out in the industry? Why did I actually enjoy this one? https://nicole.express/2026/more-like-koi-yes-magic-potion.html

ask.com is finally dead. jeeves has presumably been taken out back and shot.

tearing out the skeleton of an abandoned project to build something new with the remains is always nice

having to read assembly code i wrote years ago is not

Accidentally destroyed the multiversal space-time continuum trying to get to the timeline where Sonic Chaos had a release with FM sound support, sorry about that

Hey! You like the analog sound of vinyl? Let me tell you about analog video games-- the Magnavox Odyssey!

(by the time I'm done shuffling the cards and trying to get the overlay to stick to an LCD, all while ranting about analog oscillators generating sync signals, everyone has left)

Today's random game Saturday is my favorite transgender bullet hell shooter for the PlayStation 2, ESPgaluda! This release comes with a Special DVD of a high score run

The arcade game used the IGS PGM hardware, though on a dedicated board rather than a cartridge (unless you're, uh, grey-market)

Identity check! Are you the same person you were this morning? Ontological safety is everyone's responsibility!

New blog post! Taking a look at the Wonderland Amusements "Alice Goes to Wonderland" pinball machine. Can I finally scratch my pinball-at-home itch? https://nicole.express/2026/nicole-in-blunderland.html

New April 1st "byte" post! Lock-on technology on the Master System? That's right! https://nicole.express/2026/april-fools-joke.html

It's interesting how many games got completely different releases on the ColecoVision and SG-1000; Congo Bongo, for example, Coleco's has the isometric perspective but Sega flattened it out... and then some Sega games like Turbo were only on the ColecoVision (probably just due to age in that case)

It's a random Saturday, so today's Random Game Saturday is Dragon Ball for the Famicom! I think this game is more fun than the card-based followups, personally... and yeah this is Dragon Power here, since Dragon Ball hadn't actually been released in the US yet they did a weird license strip

I wonder if the old advice of "use fewer Latinate words to make your English more understandable" still holds on the internet, or if there are enough second-language English speakers who are also familiar with a Romance language that Latinate words are actually more understandable than Germanic

I, of course, do not actually try to make my speech understandable to anyone at all, so

Today's "Random Game Saturday" is Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the Nintendo Gamecube! This should've been an excellent title, giving people like me in the Nintendo ecosystem access to Mega Man 8 for the first time... except they screwed up the controls, swapping the A and B button with no way to reverse it. Why, Capcom?

Was walking to work this morning, the way the ice was melting on the Charles River is wild

I missed a few weeks of "Random Game Saturday", so here's a compilation game to make up for it-- Falcom Classics for the Saturn, with faithful remakes of Dragon Slayer, Xanadu, and Ys

also, cameo by His Master's Voice

Whenever I play Balatro on anything other than gold deck I just get frustrated I have no money and go play on gold deck instead

Today's Random Game Saturday is Thunder Storm & Road Blaster, a 2-disc Sega Saturn double feature of two FMV games! Now is definitely the time to revenge! Thunder Storm was also known as Cobra Command outside Japan, Road Blaster was also known as Road Avenger (or Road Prosecutor, on LaserActive)

fun fact: the box art I made for Space Ava 201 is inspired by the cover of my quantum mechanics textbook from way back when i was trying to be a physicist

Not what I wanted to see when booting up my Apple ][plus, but I think it's just an issue with the text generator ROM; can you tell why?

"kiB", pronounced "kilobyte"

given the 90's environmentalism present in the pioneer games for the laseractive, it's a missed opportunity that it never got a captain planet FMV title

I "vibe-coded" my latest kill bot. Here's why you should probably lock your doors.

Bing! And Deicide

It's weird how a little while ago Massachusetts announced how it was going to redesign the flag and seal and put out designs and then just ignored the whole thing

I guess the new designs were pretty uninspiring?

...does anyone other than me even use a .express domain name? I wonder if it hurts my blog vs. if I had a .com or something