Around 1000 units were sold in Europe and North America respectively but more were sold in Japan. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] Many games and demos made by hobbyists on the Net Yaroze were released on various demo discs that came along with magazines such as the Official UK PlayStation Magazine and PlayStation Underground . [ 4 ] [ 7 ] Sony set up an online forum where users could share their homemade games, programming tips and ask questions to Sony's technical support staff. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] Dedicated Usenet groups, with access restricted to Yaroze members, were maintained by Sony and homepage hosting was also provided. [ 5 ] [ 12 ] [ 13 ] The access was restricted according to the kit's region of origin, which made collaboration between users in different territories impractical. [ 5 ] [ 12 ] Other games were also distributed online by their authors.
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PSIO is flash cartridge which can also be used for development that plugs into your PlayStation’s Parallel I/O Port. It allows you to instantly see your software running from an SD Card or via USB on real hardware, making it the ultimate developers tool, as well as making it invaluable for debugging.
The Yaroze's primary RAM was the same as the consumer's model (2 megabytes). Game code, graphics, audio samples and run-time libraries were limited to fit in the 2 MB of primary RAM, 1 MB of VRAM, and MB of sound RAM, since the Net Yaroze will not play user-burned CDs, a necessary restriction in order to prevent piracy and ensure that the Yaroze program would not compete with the PlayStation's professional software development kit. [ 5 ] This however, was not a problem for licensed developers who owned the official SDK. There are many commercial PlayStation titles (such as Devil Dice , long mistaken as a Net Yaroze game [ 7 ] ) that can be entirely RAM-resident, and have been developed with the Net Yaroze, while using the CD strictly to spool Red Book audio ( CD-DA ).
My two personal favorites are Psychon , by Ben James, which feels like a spiritual ancestor of Hotline Miami , and Clone , a terrifying Doom knock-off created by someone called Stuart Ashley. There are also some great technical marvels. Total Soccer Yaroze is a smooth, fast-paced soccer sim by Charles Chapman and Terra Incognita , by a Japanese collaboration called Team Fatal, is a fully-fledged, bona-fide RPG. They’re all basic by today’s standards, and a few of the Yaroze hits—such as the Pac-Man -like The Incredible Coneman —are unabashed rip offs, but they each have something. I don’t like the word “charm”—it’s patronizing—but in the context of the late-1990s, when game development was mutating even further into corporate behemoth, I can’t help but admire the Net Yaroze’s bedroom sensibility.
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