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This system is great. Since it's release, and the use of the latest available dumper and experimental firmware, I can play all the games I love. I do have a few finicky carts, mostly Activision, but some of you who write helpful things on here have helped me, such as the person that suggested moving Juno First leftwards in the slot. Thank you. Despite owning all these roms and having the ability to play on a Miyoo Mini handheld for free, I STILL bought over a thousand dollars worth of carts to play on this system, including the very expensive aftermarket games Scramble, B*nq, Space Invaders 7800, Jr Pac Man 7800, Frenzy, Double Dragon, Asteroids Deluxe, Klax 7800, Ikari Warriors 7800 and all the good 2600 games I used to play, including a weird double header Sir Lancelot cart. Money was no object. I am not going to live forever and I wanted to have these experiences on a gigantic C1 OLED while I still can. For that I am profoundly grateful as I had a component modded light sixer but it wasn't a patch, a few issues aside, on the 2600+ experience. It also is a totally different experience playing using nice custom arcade style controllers from BDRetroMods on Etsy. Highly recommended, especially his controller for space invaders / demon attack style games. I'm still shocked everytime I load Imagic's Demon Attack at how crisp and beautiful the sprites, colors and fonts are. It could bring a tear to my eye. I've even played rarer games I never had in the 80s and wish I knew about like Gyruss, Time Pilot, and the amazing Beamrider. Hell, I even played and enjoyed Aardvark although I wanted to throw it across the room and then give it the ET treatment for personal reasons back in February. (don't worry, no carts were harmed). Yes, I agree paddle behavior isn't good on some games, and so have not been able to enjoy Super Breakout much, but it's not a make or break for me, and I never really got into Kaboom. Also, while Star Raiders is a classic and I would love to play with the gamepad, it and Star Master as a genre has not held up as much for me as time has passed and IMO Solaris far surpasses it. Nor is it a big deal not being able to play certain games that use methods that possibly won't ever work with the 2600+. (Champ Games, sorry, wish I would support you, but....). Pitfall II, alas, is a game I would enjoy, but I don't really like the Pitfall series as much as others, give me Montezuma's Revenge any day. Don't really understand WHY some people have such negative views when they can't play some games i don't think are worth a damn, but hey, horses for courses I guess. The only game I can't play at the moment is Stella's Stocking but I'm hopeful it will eventually be playable based on rumors I've read around here. I've heard the games on there are fun. Overall, it's an amazing system. Ben has been amazing, the developers working for him have been amazing, and I'm sad he said he might not be active for much longer and move on, but I'm glad we at least got this system despite it's limitations. It's a great system, it's quality, and he should be proud as should everyone involved in helping improve it.

It's a stretch, but it kind of was in arcades. YR started off as a port of Cinematronics' Star Castle, but when HSW couldn't get that concept to work right on the 2600, he retooled it and gave us YR.

To be fair, they mentioned that this was one of the two ways to get the Zorlon cannon in the original game's manual. I know most games have no manual anymore, but back in the day, you couldn't have a tutorial to explain things, so relied on the manual. I would say it's not a design flaw for two reasons: 1) What happens if a player just sprays and prays the shield away with their normal shot? How are they supposed to get the ZC? The shield doesn't regenerate, so some way was needed to accomplish this. 2) This becomes a high risk, high reward feature that builds the tension I grew up playing games like YR, and I think I just discovered this trick on accident. I didn't think "that's stupid!," it taught me to use strategy. If the shields were gone and I'd used, but missed, with the ZC, then I learned to wait for the Qotile to fire, hope it missed me, then immediately go and touch it to get the ZC. Otherwise, it's a tension building risk...will it kill me when I'm right there, or will it not. Still, it never fires immediately after it already has fired, so that's always your chance. As for this new take in the form of Yars' Rising, I'll wait to play it and see. I am glad they are looking to bring it back, but when I first watched the trailer, it seemed to me like they just had some other Metroidvania in development, Atari asked if they wanted to do a Yars game, then slapped that license on to it. I could be wrong. Still, from the trailer, I am disappointed that it doesn't appear to follow the original game's lore (from the manual and comic book) at all, but we'll see if their surprise somehow ties it all together.

I have been hoping to work on a project to use a Portfolio card drive with the "Book 8088" laptop, which has an ISA card slot add-on. I have always wanted to try the card drive, but I didn't have a PC with ISA slots since many, many years ago. Now I do with this little Book 8088! I finally found a really nice, complete Portfolio card drive, but now I cannot find my PC USB floppy so that I can access the drivers. I have been looking for the CD.SYS driver for the card drive all over the internet but I cannot find it. Can someone upload it here? Thank you!

😀 It was never in the arcade. It was introduced on the 2600. Maybe it was ported to other consoles, not sure. I actually love the game. I play it all the time, at least weekly. Once you know how it all works, it's a nice challenge.

This is a 16k version with no blank lines. Stay Puft can walk behind buildings. It also includes an oppressive hazy sky with purplish clouds, symbolizing Goozer's arrival on Earth. There is an interesting effect in this 16k version, when holding the Reset key, in addition to restarting the game, you get a multicolored playing field. I've been thinking about using the effect as an endgame. For those who remember, in the final moments of the film, with the imminent victory of the ghostbusters over the figure of Goozer, there is an immense explosion felt by the entire population of the city, which puts an end to the boss Goozer and unfortunately also to the giant Stay Puft. Stay_Puft_16k_NBL.bas Stay_Puft_16k_NBL.bas.bin

So… there was a reason why they needed a whopping 40 years to do gameplay-fix…! Did this game make big money in the Arcades…? Or was is mostly a 2600-home video-game with 300 page manual, that made it iconic? How long do you think this take on gameplay would’ve survived in Japan(s gaming market)?

There's a list to get on that, but you have to wait.

https://www.microids.com/microids-records-celebrates-ataris-50th-anniversary-with-special-vinyl-release/

Haha, you think THAT'S counterintuitive!? How about the fact that once your cannon is activated, you aim it by using YOURSELF as the cross hair. That's right, once you press the fire button to fire your cannon, the bullet comes straight at you and kills you unless you dodge your own bullet in the split second you have after you fire it. 😀

Current Leader: 6694 - grips03 3371 - K3V 3787 - grips03 4006 - grips03 4635 - grips03 4841 - grips03 5858 - grips03 3206 - Machine 4631 - Clint Thompson 5738 - ZPH(James) 2630 - ZPH(Tanya) 6694 - grips03

When will the rom be available?

Released 4/19/24: Asteroid v Claw $7.19 Made for the Classic Joystick, currently a VCS exclusive! Latest by Metgan Games. Catch an asteroid with your claw spinner then use it to smash oncoming asteroids. Is also compatible with the Modern Controller.

"Worst game ever" is a tired old exaggeration. It's a neat little game and totally classic and historical Atari 2600. And it's not that difficult to get the hang of it just by reading the manual once. Looks like a nice clean copy.

doing some final testing and will be releasing a preorder soon. keep an eye out.

We do have almost the entire source. Everything but bank 7. I am currently working to try to obtain the missing piece.

Nearly finished with updating FBLOCKS. I need to burn an EPROM with the latest beta so I can test my revised Compact Flash utilities. Actually, the only one I had to modify was CFPMOUNT , which is the word that writes the mounted DSK volume to the compact flash so that the mount persists past power-down. The change was necessitated by the new DSRLNK described a few posts back. ...lee

And it’s so sad … a game like Maze Invaders, when they saw it didn’t make enough money… could’ve been brought back to be refined and redesigned, - in my esteem it could’ve really been something given just a few easy fixes, - not like having to explain or redo the paradigm all-over, but just better visuals, more eyecandy, a way to win the game, cool or fun music and power-ups… but no…

It's nice to see you back and with something new.

Thanks a lot for the update! I do like what I see

So the keypad on the bottom right corner of the screen seems to indicate that it's a touch screen? Interesting.

This is beyond incredible!