Universal MegaManEffect

Long before there was Billable there was a weekend hack called the MegaManEffect. What is the MegaManEffect?

The MegaManEffect is an application that emulates an effect seen in the classic NES game Mega Man 2. When you launch an OS X application, the screen goes dark, stars sweep the night sky and your application’s icon is presented in a blue letter box bar with a cheesy 8-bit music introduction.

MegaManEffect

MegaManEffect was written while I attended the ADHOC/MacHack conference in 2004 and took second place in the ADHOC Labs Showcase! In the summer of 2005 the application hit a nerve in the community generating tons of interest and downloads. It is to this day the most distributed code I’ve even written by myself.

Anyways, a while back my personal site imploded and the MegaManEffect download page disappeared. After many, many emails I’m finally putting it back online here and even upgraded it to a Universal Binary so it runs great on Intel Macs.

The source for MegaManEffect is available under a BSD license on the new Clickable Bliss Google Code Project. Checkout via SVN using:

svn checkout http://clickablebliss.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Cocoa/MegaManEffect ~/Desktop/MegaManEffect

The code itself isn’t terribly good (it was written as I was still learning Cocoa) but oh well. :-) Enjoy.

Posted on: June 30, 2007 – 8:35 pm

9 Comments

  1. pauldwaite wrote:

    “What is the MegaManEffect?”

    I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but the phrase “greatest bit of OS X software I’ve ever seen” does spring to mind.

    I installed it on my ancient G4 Mac test machine at my old job. I’d forget it was activated and the sound was on, so I’d launch up Safari and suddenly treat the entire office to the Megaman intro music. Really helped build up my credibility as a professional member of the team :)

    Good on ya for resurrecting it.

  2. champion wrote:

    Sorta bug report: I’m on OS X 10.4.10 Intel, and if I hide the window that says “Turn on the ‘Mega Man Effect’”, it un-hides anytime the animation plays.

    No surprise if you don’t feel like debugging, but just so you know.

  3. Mike Zornek wrote:

    @champion I don’t experience that behavior, but the little window does show every time you click on the dock icon. Thanks for the feedback.

  4. Mashi wrote:

    I remember hearing about this on AOTS, and when I finally got my Mac to run OS X I went on the hunt for this application. Then I forgot about it for several months, but I’m happy to have found it again. I’ve downloaded it and tried to open it, but it ends up quitting automatically. Is it safe to assume that it doesn’t run on 10.2.8? Or am I doing it wrong?

  5. koro wrote:

    so, leopard compatible? I think i’ll have to download this and give it a try at work.

  6. sikanrong wrote:

    dude! I just fired this up because i wanted to see it, and I swear I started laughing my ASS off for 5 minutes. it really is the best OSX app in forever + 1

  7. Phil wrote:

    Man i almost dropped a tear. Thanks buddy, i love it.

  8. Mike wrote:

    wow, thx! looks coooool! :D

  9. brendan wrote:

    i remember getting this game for christmas when i was younger.. 6 or 7.. i played it for hours on end until i finally beat it. it’s still my favourite game!

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