OldSchoolRetroGamer, on Thu Dec 13, 2012 5:09 PM, said:

I see. Well, I was thinking of the typical emulators built in these cheap devices, with lots of lag, dropped frames, bad sprite priority and atrocious sound, not the decent emulators made by people who give a damn.

I'm fairly sure that if a console plays carts it's not using emulation. It might be using system-on-a-chip cloned hardware that might not function identically to the original console, but in most cases that's still better than emulation.

Tec Toy has released several Mega Drive consoles with built-in games. Older ones (like this one) had cartridge slots, while newer ones are emulation-based and some have SD slots. Here are the links to their website: Mega Drive 3 with 81 built-in games, Mega Drive 3 with 86 built-in games, Mega Drive 4 Guitar Idol with 100 built-in games.

The aesthetics of the original game totally resembles early NES games (although Ralph and Felix use way too many colors), but I believe the mechanics could work decently on the 2600.

Ralph is always above Felix, so he could be drawn with both players and retain his massive physical dimensions. Falling bricks could be done with one player and its missile, and Felix would use the other player, and possibly its missile. The building would have to be done with the playfield, which could make the representation of broken windows tricky.

soonersfan60, on Tue Sep 4, 2012 11:45 AM, said:

I'm starting to thing that all these cases of snowy video could be related to rust or something like that on/in the RF box. I'm hoping that removing it and installing a composite video mod will result in good video.

tokumaru, on Thu Jun 21, 2012 11:58 PM, said:

I think there's still a chance to bring this Atari back! After the mishap with the wrong capacitor (I tried a 0.1uF capacitor, like the schematics show, but the original was actually 0.47uF, and it looks exactly like these), I finally got the right one and soldered it to the board. I can see that games are running now, but for a very short time, like a second or so. After that it all turns black and/or glitchy.

Personally, I think that the games being able to draw to the screen is a great sign, because it means that the main chips are still working. If something important had fried I would never be able to see a picture, right? So now I need help from you guys to figure out what component that wrong capacitor could have ruined. =)

Is this a problem you've seen before (game running for a second and then crapping out)? Do you have any idea of what could be causing this? What is the purpose of that capacitor anyway? I checked the voltage all across the board, it looks normal. No components feel particularly hot to the touch. Since I don't know much about electronics, I don't know what else to test. Any ideas?

Thanks again for your patience... But you know how it is when we collect consoles, right? We always want them in the best possible shape!