Adam Gashlin
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hcs64.bsky.social
Adam Gashlin
@hcs64.bsky.social
25 followers 24 following 90 posts
Programmer, aspiring game designer, CD+G enthusiast.
https://gashlin.net
https://hcs64.itch.io
https://extended.graphics
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Reposted by Adam Gashlin
hcs64.bsky.social
I acquired two more NHK Wild Birds CD-Gs! Here's Volume 4, Waterside birds (水辺の野鳥編). 46 birds in 70 minutes, check it out on the web: hcs64.com/VOG-YC4/
Cover, featuring the blue rock thrush (イソヒヨドリ) from track 14, blue head and wings, red underbelly. Polydor VOG-YC4 Black-headed gull (ユリカモメ) from track 9, shown here on the water in winter plumage with white head. Pacific swift (アマツバメ) from track 16, in flight with wings swept back. Black with a white rump. Could not resist including the mandarin duck (オシドリ), elaborately colored male pictured on track 37.
September 24, 2025 at 2:34 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
Happy birthday! For me it's the OoT crash debugger tcrf.net/The_Legend_o...
October 28, 2025 at 11:53 PM
hcs64.bsky.social
It's been 30 years since the launch of CD Extra! These audio CDs have special features for computers, hidden from CD players in a 2nd session.
Initially it was called "CD Plus", as in this mid-1995 Sony demo. The name was soon changed, but the Blue Book standard kept a CDPLUS directory for metadata.
A CD, mostly mirrored grey, text and graphics in black and olive. A large block at the top reads: "CD Plus is the latest breakthrough in multimedia technology. Put this disc in a CD player and it will play like a regular Compact Disc. Put this disc in a CD-ROM drive of a computer and a new world of interactive adventure is yours to enjoy, including graphics, text, and video!" Track list: 1. Mariah Carey - Miss You Most (At Christmas Time) 2. Bob Dylan - Dignity 3. Toad The Wet Sprocket - Inside 4. Alice In Chains - Nutshell 5. Wynton Marsalis - Little Red-Haired Girl 6. Mary Chapin Carpenter - This Is Love A slew of logos is present: Compact Disc Digital Audio +, CD Plus, Columbia, Microsoft Windows Compatible. Labeled "Demonstration - Not For Sale", serial numbers XXR 68100 and CPDP000010.
October 6, 2025 at 6:51 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
I acquired two more NHK Wild Birds CD-Gs! Here's Volume 4, Waterside birds (水辺の野鳥編). 46 birds in 70 minutes, check it out on the web: hcs64.com/VOG-YC4/
Cover, featuring the blue rock thrush (イソヒヨドリ) from track 14, blue head and wings, red underbelly. Polydor VOG-YC4 Black-headed gull (ユリカモメ) from track 9, shown here on the water in winter plumage with white head. Pacific swift (アマツバメ) from track 16, in flight with wings swept back. Black with a white rump. Could not resist including the mandarin duck (オシドリ), elaborately colored male pictured on track 37.
September 24, 2025 at 2:34 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
Ran across an interesting early CD+G technical document, from "AV Technology on Display", December 1985: "Toshiba Corporation: Putting CD Graphics into Practical Use". Has some good technical info and a rare aside about Line Graphics
www.cieri.net/Documenti/Do...
Two columns of text from a technical article, transcription follows: Now, as shown in Fig. 1 (e) and Fig. 2, there is a COMMAND symbol at the top of the pack indicating the pack data property, which consists of a 3-bit MODE switch and a 3-bit item to subdivide the mode. The codes allotted now and the application modes are shown in Table 2. The MODE = 1 is a graphics mode, for which ITEMS of LINE-GRAPHICS (ITEM = 0) and TV-GRAPHICS (ITEM = 1) are specified. For the former, display on monochrome/color liquid crystal display or electroluminescent display are assumed and for the latter, display on a TV receiver is assumed. Liquid crystal, EL or other flat-panel displays have become Higher in performance, smaller in thickness, and lower in price and, in the future, LINE-GRAPHICS display will become possible by attaching them to CD players. For the time being, however, TV graphics with TV receiver will be the main application. With the graphics mode, drawing and shifting of pictures on display can be made by the INSTRUCTION and DATA FIELD data. The ZERO mode is used when no data is transmitted through the R - W channels and keeps interchangeability with the CD that is not using the R - W channels. For the USER mode, users can define the INSTRUCTION and DATA FIELD but it is limited for professional use.
September 22, 2025 at 9:47 PM
hcs64.bsky.social
That's the last time I'm suffering through another Topaz on Towpaths project, my next app will use Tourmaline on Two Legs
September 12, 2025 at 2:55 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
Reading this write-up on Daniel Temkin's upcoming esolang book, I learned of the author's amusing Olympus language, expressing programs as prayers to ancient Greek gods: danieltemkin.com/Esolangs/Oly...
I remembered an ambitious idea for an educational programming game: gashlin.net/blog/pages/2...
September 8, 2025 at 8:10 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
The soundtrack for Super B-Daman Battle Phoenix 64 is an enhanced CD, but though the obi makes a big deal of the MIDI content, the data track contains only a single Standard MIDI file.
I collect N64 soundtracks but hadn't heard of this one until I spotted an auction last year.
Album cover featuring a 3D render of a B-Daman toy on a perspective grid. Title is スーパービーダマン バトルフェニックス 64 サウンドトラック(イディアバージョン) Obi strip, advertising that the album includes 3 unused tracks and (in large red characters) MIDI Data.
September 5, 2025 at 10:23 PM
hcs64.bsky.social
Ingi Game Theme Music CD-ROM (인기게임 테마뮤직) includes vocal tracks and BGM for four games published in Korea by SKC Softland: Ant Man, Blue Chicago Blues, Dark Side Story, and Eclipse. Track 1 is a DOS CD player program, with a cool feature to show graphics from the games: youtu.be/JKl5XQCTCN0
Ant Man - Stage 2 (Ingi Game Theme Music arrange)
YouTube video by Adam Gashlin
youtu.be
September 4, 2025 at 8:32 PM
hcs64.bsky.social
While Avex Trax would later include Enhanced CD content in many releases, this 1994 compilation "Avex Dance Vol. 1" is the only one I found using CD+G. Mostly it's slowly scrolling artist bios and album covers, with occasional neat effects like this fractal palette cycle: youtu.be/8u3zKPIbza0
Avex Dance Vol. 1 CD graphics disc. The label is translucent red ink over a black and white wavy pattern that is fairly hard to read. Avex Trax AVCD-11240, labeled as a Sample edition. A pattern of halftone dots in magenta, green, blue, and orange. From Track 6 - Life So Free / The Federation, it's an almost unrecognizable image from the cover of the Realise C/W Life So Free single. Palm trees silhouetted against green and orange plasma clouds. From track 8 - Oh Carol! / General Saint feat. Don Campbell. Monochrome purple photo of The Prodigy, with overlapping rectangles in red, green blue, and yellow. From track 13 - No Good (Start The Dance) / The Prodigy. I will admit that I chose this frame for maximum goofiness, it flashes between this and more muted colors.
September 3, 2025 at 9:06 PM
hcs64.bsky.social
I'm always on the lookout for unusual uses of CD+G, this is the most unique yet: CDG Palm Reading, a 3 disc set showing hand diagrams, explaining the fortune telling interpretation. Imagine a market with enough CDG players where this would make sense instead of a CD and book, or a PC CD-ROM.
A CD Graphics disc labeled CDG手相術 ズバリ!あなたを占う。(something like "CDG Palmistry: Exactly! Tell your fortune.") This is disc 1 of 3 and the track listing shows Explanation: What Is Palmistry? (解説「手相」とは , track 1), discussion of the Life Line (生命線 , tracks 2-30), and Sun Line (太陽線 , tracks 31-49). CTA Co., Ltd. cat. no. CD-GT1. I left out the cover because it has a weird cartoony model hand that I still find a bit disturbing. Title screen of Disc 1, with a photograph of a left hand. The background with the hand uses dedicated palette entries and fades in separately. There's a lot of gratuitous gradients and lines in red, lavender, magenta. The text itself is white and pale green. A wonderful mess. Introducing our commentator, Tachibana Tesshuu (橘　哲洲 , reading given on the back as たちばなてっしゅう). I don't know who wrote and narrated everything but this is the only name mentioned anywhere. This is a headshot of a serious bald man wearing black glasses and a plain dark kimono, in an oval cutout with a dithered pink background. The name is in red, white text also says "Commentary" (解説) and "Honorary Member Japan I Ching Association" (日本易学連合会名誉会員). Life line chart 1, line drawing of a hand with one crease highlighted in red. The background is light purple, there's a funky multi-level beveled frame around the red-orange text on the right. 90% of the disc runtime looks almost exactly like this, occasionally the line will blink.
September 2, 2025 at 12:06 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
A nice selection of photos for a soothing half hour of rhythmic waterwheel clanking and light BGM. I now have 6 of the 10 CD-G discs in this series, earlier mentioned here bsky.app/profile/hcs6...
Title screen of "A Gift from Nature, Told through Sound and Video" (Oto to Eizou de Tsuzuru Shizen Kara no Okurimono), featuring a waterwheel (Suisha), TSP-4006
August 31, 2025 at 8:56 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
First blog post in a while, how I encoded Bad Apple!! to CD+G for a karaoke machine
gashlin.net/blog/pages/2...
July 20, 2025 at 11:41 PM
Reposted by Adam Gashlin
coincidence.games
Kaizen: A Factory Story is now available on Steam!

Build assembly lines to make toys, electronics, appliances, and more in 1980s Japan. Impress your bosses with your innovative solutions.

store.steampowered.com/app/2275490/...

Look out for weekly bonus puzzles coming your way soon!
Save 10% on Kaizen: A Factory Story on Steam
Kaizen is an open-ended puzzle automation game from the original Zachtronics team, set in 1980s Japan. Design, build, and optimize production lines to create iconic products, like calculators, camcord...
store.steampowered.com
July 14, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Adam Gashlin
rockpapershotgun.bsky.social
If you've played any game by the developers at Coincidence Games (nee Zachtronics), you'll have some idea of what's in Kaizen: A Factory Story: A free-form puzzler about programming little machines to build stuff. bit.ly/3TYHXff
July 14, 2025 at 3:45 PM
hcs64.bsky.social
Out of context screenshot from Felix Mendelssohn Symphony No. 2 CD+G (Warner New Media 15029)
Jesus, crowned with thorns, in blue monochrome, peeking in from the bottom left on an image scrolling off the top of the screen. A line of annotation reads "The return of the first trombone"
June 18, 2025 at 11:44 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
This is the Subcode R-W Test Disc from Kenwood, CD-T03, an hour long exercise of CD Graphics functionality. I picked it up because I noticed it listed a test of LINE instructions, and I'd been looking for an example of the very obscure Line Graphics mode. That's just one of the cool things on here!
A blue and silver CD, Kenwood Subcode (R-W) Test Disc, catalog number CD-T03. It lists 5 aspects: 1. Test Pattern, 2. Subcode Instruction, 3. Test Signal, 4. Graphics, 5. Listening Test. These aren't individual tests or tracks, so I'm not sure why they're enumerated like this. Back cover, with the same aspects listed on the disc label. They're broken out into sub-components here; notably 2 (Sub Code Instruction) has a LINE section, indicating tests of the Line graphics mode, above the larger section for the common CD+G "TV" mode. Title screen, white text on red: Trio-Kenwood CD-T03 CD Test Disk Apparently there was still a business unit called Trio-Kenwood until 1996. Second screen, "The pictures on this disk are made according to CD SYSTEM DESCRIPTION dated February 1985." The date is in red, possibly a reference to the "red book" CD audio spec; the liner notes call it the "red booklet".
April 13, 2025 at 4:48 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
I made a small update to my letter puzzle Fitting Words, should improve the early progression.
hcs64.itch.io/fitting-words
Fitting Words by hcs64
A letter puzzle
hcs64.itch.io
April 9, 2025 at 4:38 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
2025 is the 40th anniversary of Japanese CD manufacturer Memory-Tech. This two disc set from May 1995 commemorates the 10th anniversary. The gold disk 1 is a unique Deutsche Grammophon classical compilation. Disk 2 is a reissue of Kitaro - Silk Road Best.
(Just audio CDs, for a change of pace!)
Wavy blue and white cover with a design in black. Labeled: The Commemorative CD 10th Anniversary Memory-Tech Corporation Disk 1, MTC-0001, gold with Deusche Grammophon logo Disk 2, MTC-0002, white with a blue geode cross-section. Labeled Memory-Tech Music Collection. 喜多郎 (Kitaro), Pony Canyon logo. Booklet page 2, introduction letter from the Memory-Tech president and CEO, May 1995. Includes a photo of the M-T offices.
April 4, 2025 at 4:43 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
Sansyusya had a long series of CD Books, combining print with audio, often language lessons. This 1990 release of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 is the only one I've found with CD Graphics. Bad colors and dithering, Zoom System Service would improve, but good use of partial updates and scrolling.
A CD with a blue label. CD-Graphics Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D Minor op. 125 "Choral", GCDX-2, on Sansyusa's CD Books label. The book title, not seen here, is prominently "Daiku" (ninth). Title screen: "Beethoven Sinfonie Nr. 9", white text in a black box. It is surrounded by woodcut cherubs in black and white, on a blue background. The background and figures are drawn in after the title. Detail of an Renaissance painting by (the studio of) Fra Angelico, depicting an angel with pink clothes and blue wings adoring something off to the right. It is very badly digitized from a photo, though it wouldn't look quite so bad on a CRT. This is initially drawn dim and fades brighter. Opening words of Ode to Joy (An die Freude), in German with katakana pronunciation, from the fourth movement. The text is presented in a long, continuous scroll, dark blue text on a light blue background with line art in white.
April 3, 2025 at 6:37 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
I found something endearing about this CD+G BGM series from 1996. 10 discs, each a half hour long with some stock photos, soothing sounds, and light music.
A neat effect: Fade out is at the start, not end, of tracks, so if you skip mid-track the old image fades out, avoiding a sudden cut to black.
Title screen of "A Gift from Nature, Told through Sound and Video" (Oto to Eizou de Tsuzuru Shizen Kara no Okurimono), featuring a small bird (Kotori), TSP-4001 A beautiful coastline, title screen of TSP-4003, "Sea" (Umi) A large bell silhouetted against autumn foliage, "Temple Bells" (Tera no Kane), TSP-4009 A train at a station, title screen of "Trains and Travel" (Kisha to Ryojou), TSP-4010. This was my favorite, I liked the railside scenes and train sounds
April 2, 2025 at 6:36 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
This is a 1993 mini CD+G promoting Japan's approach to the 1994 World Cup. There are two songs with lyrics, and a good deal of information about the tournament history and schedule, with text, infographics, and narration.
Cover of "Kake World Cup Soccer e no Michi". On the left is a soccer scene, in the style used in the CD graphics. On the right is a cartoon announcer kicking a ball while holding a microphone. A map showing the 9 US host cities for the 1994 World Cup. Crowd waving Japanese flags A scrolling table of past World Cups
April 1, 2025 at 12:37 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
In 1994 Casio made a series of 3 instructional CD+Gs to go along with the KT-90G keyboard, which had a built in CD Graphics player. This version features "Let it Be", the other two have children's songs and enka. Palette animation is used to highlight the keys in sync with the music.
Cover for "KT-90G Your Song" (ED-12G), showing a watercolor of a cool dude playing keyboard, and a pink toned photo of a car in front of a palm tree. CD graphics image from the intro: A woman is playing a Casio keyboard and smiling, music notes fill the air. There's a black cat lying on the floor in the background. Top: A musical staff with notes. Bottom: The middle 2 octaves of a keyboard. 4 keys are highlighted in different shades of blue. As the music plays the notes are highlighted and the individual keys light up. By using a different color for each key they can be toggled instantly. The last track is for tuning, the graphics show what key to press and where to find the tuning adjustment on the back of the KT-90G.
March 31, 2025 at 12:46 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
This 1993 NHK CD has more than bird songs and narration, it also includes illustrations and info in CD+G graphics. I set up a web player where you can see and hear all 31 birds in this volume: hcs64.com/VOG-YC2/
Cover, title translated as NHK CD-G Wild Birds of Japan Volume 2: Forest Birds Part 2. Shows a pixelated bird in the style used on the CD-G. Jōbitaki - Daurian redstart, a small bird with an orange lower body Rurikakesu - Lidth's jay, a bird rendered with a red-brown body and purple wings, tail, and head. Kashiradaka - Rustic bunting
March 30, 2025 at 1:57 AM
hcs64.bsky.social
Soft Pop 231, a 1990 CD-BGM from Philips Background Music Systems. These include a CD-i menu with play controls.
A CD cartridge labeled "Professional Compact Disc Background Music Systems: Soft Pop" Title screen: "Philips BMS: SOFTPOP 231" and play controls
March 28, 2025 at 5:39 AM