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troff

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About troff

  • Birthday 03/20/1973

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Enfield, CT
  • Currently Playing
    Ratcatcher 5200

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  1. I was just recently thinking it would be fun to start a “I’ve got your old cart!” thread. You post pictures of carts with people’s names on them, and we can all see if someone ended up with our or our friend’s carts! 😀
  2. For February , the AtariAge 5200 OE High Score club is playing Activisions's H.E.R.O., which is a great game I haven't spent enough time playing. So I got my 5200 HERO cartridge, hooked it up to my 5200, and discovered that the second button on my 1 working controller wasn't working - which is kind of essential for HERO. I took my working controller apart, gave it a good cleaning, and put it back together. The second button was now working! Inspired by this success, I decided to go ahead and try the same cleaning procedure on my second controller, which has never worked for me. Upon taking it apart, I discovered two things: the left/right pot was horribly rusted, and the traces for the Start button had peeled off the flex circuit. I cleaned the pot out, and all of the button contacts. I put the controller back together. I thought I would try out HERO with this controller to see how it worked. Surprisingly, the Start button did work. Any amount of pressure was pushing those broken traces together, shorting them out and registering as a button press. Unfortunately, using the top side buttons has the same effect! However, the actual joystick part of the controller was working perfectly. This got me thinking; this controller would be perfect as a second controller for the twin stick shooter - Space Dungeon! I'm pretty sure the second controller is only used for the joystick, the controls would be performed on the first controller! So I plugged in Space Dungeon, both controllers, and used a 3D printed controller group I had purchased for this a while back. Everything worked perfectly! I've owned this game for a while, but haven't had the chance to try it out until now. Space Dungeon is a 1982 twin stick shooter arcade game by Taito. (By some accounts, the original twin stick shooter). The Atari 5200 port was the only home port of this game. I generally like twin stick shooters, and this game is no exception! The difficulty is tough, but fair. In addition to a healthy supply of enemies comming after you, there is an exploration element. You need to search through an array of rooms to find "treasure". When you are ready to leave the level, you find your way to the a special "Collect Bonus" zone. At this point you get bonus points for all the treasure you've collected and move on to the next level. If you die before you make it to the "Collect Bonus", you drop all your treasure in the room you died. This room gets marked on the map, so you can go collect it with your next llife. I love the risk/reward balance. The more treasure you collect, the higher bonus you will get. But this takes longer, and more and more enemies get spawned to make it tougher for you. Overall, a fun game, and a rare 5200 exclusive. I'm spending way too much time playing this game.
  3. On his blog, Ken Shiriff is running an excellent series on reverse engineering the Intel 8086 microprocessor by looking at it's die under a microscope. I'll be linking to the individual articles here as a sort of "Table of Contents" for the series. Counting the transistors in the 8086: harder than you may think Power and clock routing The HALT circuits Conditional jump circuitry Understanding the x86's Decimal Adjust after Addition (DAA) instruction
  4. Lately I've been enjoying the new Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration on the Nintendo Switch (https://www.mobygames.com/game/switch/atari-50-the-anniversary-celebration). It's got a lot of amazing content including pictures, interview videos, and playable games. There are definitely some games included in this collection that weren't included in the other collections I've used in the past, such as the Atari Vault on Steam, and Atari Flashback Classics on the Switch. But the one game in particular I've gotten addicted to is the arcade Cloak & Dagger. I've known about this arcade game and the home ports that never made it to market for a while, but I don't think I've ever actually played the game until this collection. On the surface, it's a two person shooter (it was released as a conversion kit for Robotron cabints). But there is also this element of finding "secret boxes", extra lives, and avoiding explosives. There are the conveyor belts which can move you across the screen quickly, or hinder your process, depending on which direction they are moving compared to you. It's very hard, and I just can't seem to put it down.
  5. https://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/frogger-ii-threeedeep I actually bought this loose cartridge a few months ago at a local retro video game store (Stateline video games). I bought it because I really like original Frogger, and I thought the price seemed decent for a rather rare game. (AtariAge rates it a 6). I plugged it in and gave it a try, without going online and reading the manual, of course. My initial thoughts were along the lines of "Well, this is weird and unplayable. But it will be a fun cart to have." Then it put it away and didn't really touch it for a while. I always try to participate in the High Score Club on Ferg's 2600 Game by Game Podcast Discord. Frogger II was the pick for January, so I was pretty excited to give it a try. Unfortunately, it's been a pretty busy month, and I didn't get much of a chance to play. (And I was also distracted by playing Ms. Pac-Man and Montezuma's Revenge for the 5200). But as we reached the end of the month, I decided I better get some time in so I could at least participate in the Club. After reading the manual, the gameplay made a lot more sense. (When will I learn?). And after a little time getting used to how it plays, I started really enjoying it. Now I think that this a fun and challenging sequel to Frogger, that I will definitely want to get out and play again in the future. I like how falling into the water/air on the higher stages drop you to the lower stage rather than killing you. Certainly makes more sense on the "Surface level" - which is essentially the single Frogger 1 screen. I guess we assume in Frogger 1 that if you fall into the water, the submarines get you. As of right now, my high score is 3,022. Actually, I think I did slightly better than that but didn't capture a screenshot because I was thinking my high score was higher. I'm going to keep playing it until the end of the month, although I have no chance of catching the other guys in the Discord. EDIT: It's also worth noting that that the 5200, 8-bit, and PC Booter versions of this game look worth checking out. The PC Booter version supports CGA composite mode, so also worth a look.
  6. Yesterday, I was flipping through some of my Atari catalogs/etc, and noticed I had a copy of the "Atari Log Book". I think I had picked it up in a system bundle I purchased locally a few years ago. I don't think I had really looked at it until now. The description on the front is "A record of your greatest hits on your Atari Video Computer System". It's sort of like the red catalogs (and looks very similar, but is blue) and is even divided into the same categories as the red catalog. Whereas the red catalog lists descriptions and info about the games, the blue log book has three levels of scores for each of the games in a specified game variation, and blanks to write in the date you achieved those scores. As I looked this over, I realize this was essentially Atari's published "Achievements" for the games! Not quite as cool as Activision's patches, but better than nothing! For example, for Circus Atari you are to play game 6b. Then there is the following ranks: 4,800 Side Show 6,400 Good Show 8,300 Greatest Show on Earth For Adventure, if you "Find the Magic Dot and enter the Secret Room", you earn the rank of "Dragon Slayer". There are 40 games in the book. These look like a lot of fun. I've been keeping tracking of which Activision patches I've earned, and I think I'm now going to start tracking these Log Book achievements as well! I searched the forums here, and I did find a few references to it, but mainly from a "collecting" perspective. I haven't found scans here on AtariAge, but there are scans over at Atari Mania. They also have the scans of the earlier green log book from 1978 which features some of the same games, but obviously more focused on the earlier games. (e.g. Star Ship makes an appearance in the green book, but not the 1982 blue book). Just curious of anyone else finds this as interesting as I do!
  7. I am currently making my way through this XXL sized episode. And, as always, I am enjoying it immensely. This podcast is always top-notch, and worth the wait, no matter how long. Rayman is a game I've always wanted to get for the Jaguar, but the cart is a little out of my price range.
  8. I go back and forth between my Sears heavy 6er and my 7800. Both are unmodded.
  9. Hey Shinto! I missed this episode until I checked here on your blog. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this episode is not showing up in the iTunes feed. However, I downloaded it from here and just listened to it. Great episode! It’s so great that you found the light gun toy. And your analysis of the value of the Atari brand is spot-on. I have given my family the same advice of, “anything with the Atari logo is good” and therefore I have a wonderful supply of Atari t-shirts and sweatshirts. I’m looking forward to you next episode, even though Syndicate is not a particular favorite of mine.
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