Flack

I grew up in the era of turn-based RPGs... games like Bard's Tale and Wizardry where you had a moment to think about strategy between each round of attacks. Along with being a marvel of 8-bit programming, this game is HARD. The one thing I'm getting really good at is creating new victims party members.

I am still out here recording podcasts and I hope all/some/two? of you are still listening. I'm currently releasing four shows a month, roughly one per week: Sprite Castle, You Don't Know Flack, Like a DOS, and Cactus Flack's (arcade). You can find info and feeds at podcast.RobOHara.com. They're all available on iTunes as well. There's also a master feed which will get you all the shows in one single feed. The first episode of You Don't Know Flack was released in March of 2008, and Sprite Castle debuted in 2014. All of my shows have had stops and starts, but I've been releasing shows regularly over the past couple of years. If you stopped listening when I took a break or never checked any of my shows out, now's a good time to (re)add them to your feed!

My dad sold our TRS-80 Model III and purchased an Apple II compatible (the Franklin Ace 1000) for two reasons: one, it was literally cheaper to buy a complete Apple II system than it was to add two floppy drives to the TRS-80 at that time, and two, our elementary school had purchased an Apple II, and that seemed to be the way things were going. I got my first Apple II many years ago at Goodwill for $1.98, complete with two floppy drives. I bought an Apple IIc at a gaming event in 2005 for $20. Over the years I've picked up four or five Apple II machines, including one black Bell and Howell model. They're pretty easy to repair and fun to play with. I still have one in my office with a CFFA300 installed.

Is this one of the WiFi/Arduino modems? I could dump a copy of Novaterm or CCGMS and mail it to you, but in the long run you should really look at one of the many alternative drive solutions. The SDIEC and Kung Fu Flash are both cheap for all the things they give you, both of which would allow you to load a term program from a D64 disk image.

I also got a C64 Maxi in the US from Amazon. I signed up the day pre-orders opened, and eventually got one many months later. I have half a dozen C64 "solutions" including a real 64, an Ultimate 64, and a MiSTer, so the C64 Maxi doesn't get much hands on use (it looks great on the shelf!). If you have nieces or nephews who want to mess around on an old computer and you don't necessarily want them banging on your vintage hardware, the C64 Maxi is a good solution. Also, those numbers came from Retro Games LTD's Facebook page after the announcement of the A500 Mini, who said that the sales of the C64 line were 75% for the Mini and only 25% for the Maxi. The gist of the post was that sales of the mini funded the maxi, and it was a direct response to the dozens (hundreds?) of people who responded to the announcement of the A500 Mini with "meh, I'll wait for the A500 Maxi" -- the implication being that if the mini doesn't sell well, there won't be a full size version. The big difference this time is that when the C64 Mini was announced, no one knew for sure that there would even be a Maxi. Also, those 75/25 numbers are a bit deceiving. If you were to release both products at the same time, my guess is the Maxi would outsell the Mini. I also suspect that a lot of Maxi owners also bought the Mini (I know I did). I don't know anything about Retro Games LTD or why they had such a problem getting their product to North America. Hopefully they have the kinks worked out for their next product.

Neither CSDB nor Assembly (I think) include cracked copies of games that are currently commercially available. The only place I've seen them are on BBSes, and getting them that way is a cumbersome process that involves multiple jumps depending on how you connect to the BBS. I downloaded one or two so I could comment on them for Sprite Castle and it wasn't worth the hassle. It's less of a hassle to just buy the cheap ones.

The one of the left is the worst. My thumb naturally presses up against it and I am constantly accidentally hitting it.

I don't have any insider knowledge, but the last post on the Retroist site (July 20) began, "I wrote a post about my reduced output and feelings about running the Retroist. I cannot speculate what the future will be for the Retroist, but it will most certainly be something different." That same day, one of the site's long time writers (Allison) reported that her access to the site had been revoked. Again, I have no first-hand knowledge of the current state of the site, and can only speculate that it is either being redesigned, retooled, or retired. In the meantime, most of the podcast episodes are hosted here on Archive.org.

Man oh man, does 2600 bring back a lot of memories. After my friends and I couldn't find an official 2600 gathering local to us in the mid 90s, we decided to form our own. We took everything super seriously, taking turns giving presentations and "assigning research topics," ha ha. The pizza joint we met at (which had good pizza and great beer) was located right next to a college campus, so after the meetings ended we would go exploring, looking for unlocked telco boxes and payphones to abuse. One of the guys made redboxes for everyone using the guts from Hallmark greeting cards that worked surprisingly well (and much longer than most people realize). We also made a map of all the great places around town to go dumpster diving. This one time, out behind the AT&T plant... oh, the stories I could tell. I'll have to check the statute of limitations on some of them. In 2007 I gave a presentation about self-publishing at NotaCon, and was surprised to see Emmanuel sitting in the front row next to Drew Curtis (the founder of Fark). It was probably more thrilling for me than them.

He has been warred. We have all been warred.

I'm using Windows 10. I use my card reader all the time to create images for the MiST, but just to eliminate it I tried the card reader on my laptop. Same result. So again, to recap: I formatted the card with SD Formatter, created one folder called "Game", put one ROM file inside that folder ("Pitfall.BIN"), and the unit won't read it. (For testing purposes, I have renamed the folder to "game" and "GAME" with no change. I have renamed the ROM to "Pitfall.bin" with no change.) Either all the cards I've tried are incompatible, or my unit is defective. I'm going to try and meet up with someone else who received one of these and narrow it down.

The folder is named Game (I have also tried "game" and "GAME"). Inside the folder is now one ROM, "Pitfall.BIN", pulled from the zip archive of known working ROMs. It still doesn't show up. Any other ideas?

Add me to the list of people who can't get this working. I've tried two different SanDisk cards, one 128MB and one 8GB. I formatted each of them using the SD Formatting tool listed in this thread. I downloaded the zip file of working ROMs and unzipped it to the SD card. The folder is called "Game" and that folder (and the ROMs inside it) are the only thing on the card. I renamed all the ROM extensions to .BIN (from .bin) and tried changing "Game" to "GAME". I've tried removing every ROM except the first one. My Flashback acts the same whether or not the SD card is inserted. I get "LOADING" for a second or two before it dumps me back to the menu. Did I read correctly that some of these units shipped with Space Invaders and Jungle Hunt? Mine does not have either of those games.

"Seconded. I own a camera but it doesn't make me a photographer, I own MS Word but that doesn't make me an author. Way too many people assume since they own either a microphone or webcam and have an opinion they're the gaming media equivalent of the next Paul Harvey or Howard Stern. Just because you have the ability to create something doesn't mean anyone should give a shit." Likewise, just because you have the ability to post your opinion on an internet forum doesn't mean anyone should give a fuck what you think about podcasts or anything else, for that matter. This is one of the ugliest thing about the whole retro community -- when people feel the need to dump on things that other people enjoy creating and consuming. Yes, not every single podcast out there is an award winning piece of work with flawless production, but so what? To publicly dump on things that people create for free for entertainment purposes is lacking in class, in my opinion.

Ooh yeah, I should clarify that -- I believe Ferg was the steady anchor attached to our drunken ship. Our idea was to overdo it on the booze and then invite guests on to a Google chat. It was as disorganized and rowdy as it sounds (or so I'm told). Sometimes show ideas work and sometimes they cause you to lose your tacos in a trash can the following morning. This was definitely an example of the latter, at least for me.