Zippy Zapp

Did yours ship? When did you pre-order? I pre-ordered 9/8 and got the message about Dec-Jan estimated delivery. Then a few days later I got a new date of 11/25. 11/25 it didnt ship and I got a new date of today (11/28) and of course it didn't ship and got a new "You must Approve the delay" message. A call to Amazon was pointless as they know nothing. Not a really great experience so far... Of all the years and years of pre-ordering on Amazon this is the most delayed product so far for me. Of course the world scene doesn't help. There are reports on facebook that they were briefly in stock and reportedly some were able to order them without a pre-order. If that is true then it sucks. Oh well life goes on and it is not a big deal in the grand scheme, it's just annoying.

If you tried several different USB sticks and it is still not working, I would go to the thec64.com and send them a message. You can go to their Facebook site if you have a facebook account and send them a direct message. They have always answered my queries.

20 years already, sheesh. I was lucky to get one show up on release day on more doorstep. One thing the previous consoles taught me (PS1, N64, Dreamcast) was to pre-order. I did and I was amazed when it showed up the morning of release. No lines to wait in, no sell outs. I think it was from Toys R Us online. Still holds the record for sales at 155 million. PS4 is on track to give it a run if the PS4 stays out another 2 years with 92 million sold so far. What is amazing is that the battery in my PS2 is now 18+ years old and the last time I checked it, a few months ago it was still reading 3 volts. Of course, I do have some Nintendo carts with original working batteries too, but still.

Back in the day they were pricey as replacement parts because they were still in production. My friend had a dead 64 back then and he replaced it with a C64c because it was too expensive to get it fixed. It sat in his closet until I took it in 2014. I fixed it with a $5 6510 MPU. But the prices have drastically shot up over the past couple of years. In 2014/15 I bought a couple of VIC chips and other replacement chips for $3 to $6 a piece. It was quite common, even on eBay to get these chips under $10. Now people are playing on the whole retro thing and the prices have been inflated.

LOL! Love this series, good stuff and practical for all these brittle cases we have...

Sure sounds like a Kernal (U4) or BASIC (U3) ROM problem. Have you tried replacements? http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/cbm/c64/c64-ic.txt

I have asked the question about USA retailers and this is the response I got: I think it will sell quite well in USA. There are plenty of people into the classics as evidenced by the sales of the other retro consoles. Besides remember how well the original direct to tv 64 sold here in the states, especially on QVC and Radio Shacks version. And that was way before it was cool to have all these retro consoles.

The WiModem232 is a great device. If you have a C64 then you can buy the WiModem that plugs right into the user port. They are one of my favorite devices for classic computers.

Cool. thanks for the info.

Hopefully those links come through as I don't want just a streaming link. But it is good that it will be available on Amazon, so apparently it is coming soon.

There is a listing for on USA Amazon but it goes to a page not found error.

For PLA replacement I can't say enough high praises about the PLAnkton. I have all the models mentioned above and it is by far the most compatible. If you want to buy it direct from the makers, then see this link: http://www.melon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2370

Thanks guys for the clarification. I thought since they were talking globally when this whole thing began, they were going for global from the get go. But apparently I was wrong. Hopefully they get that sorted out because I have no doubt they will sell a ton of these devices in the USA. Nintendo cannot keep SNES minis on the store shelves.

Hmm. You would think that since they announced a release date and all that, they would have plans by this time.

What retail stores are going to carry them? I have not seen anything mentioned about the USA distribution, except preorder on Amazon, but they do not exist on the US Amazon. It would be nice to go into a Target or some big store and see it on the shelf.