Mario Tennis (N64, 2000)

Developed by Camelot, Mario Tennis brings the Mushroom Kingdom crowd together for a few rounds of tennis on the Nintendo 64. There’s singles, doubles, tournaments and a surprisingly decent tennis game underneath all the colourful Nintendo characters. With lobs, slices, smashes and plenty of running around the court, it’s a rather entertaining way to test how well all that movement and colour survives a composite video capture.

Super Strike Eagle (SNES, 1993)

Now for something a little different! Super Strike Eagle is MicroProse’s attempt to squeeze an F-15 combat flight simulator onto the Super Nintendo. Released in 1993, it mixes overhead navigation with cockpit dogfights, bombing missions and some rather ambitious Mode 7 graphics. There’s quite a lot going on for a 16-bit console, particularly one that isn’t exactly famous for its flight simulators!

Super Turrican (SNES, 1993)

Finally, there’s Super Turrican, developed by Factor 5 and released in 1993. It’s a side-scrolling action platformer filled with robots, enormous levels, secret areas and enough weapons to make a considerable mess of everything. You’ve got lasers, spread shots and even a freezing beam to deal with the enemies. A bit more frantic than the previous two games, and another interesting test for the capture hardware!

This is how we do it! Game on! These were mostly captured with my old composite-to-USB H.264 encoder. Unfortunately, that capture setup no longer works with macOS 10.15 Catalina, which dropped support for 32-bit apps. I guess I will miss 32-bit binaries to a degree!

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