Kokovec69
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Atari fans "The Fun is Back", Are you ready for some fun?
Kokovec69 replied to E. King's topic in Atari General
I worked on helping to build out an NFT platform for my last company, a major Entertainment conglomerate. They spent $100M on it and almost no one cares or knows it exists. They make no money off it. However, $billions$ in VC investments are being poured into Web 3.0 startups and platforms. It's the new Unicorn trying to find a purpose. -
How did you find out about The Crash(TM)?
Kokovec69 replied to Rodney Hester's topic in Atari General
During the crash my father bought me a Vectrex and a bunch of games. My father was very miserly so it was odd that he would splurge like that. At the time I had no idea that a videogame crash was happening, and didn't really find out until sometime in the 2000's that there was one. -
Try 52. I remember buying the PS2 when it came out and playing it with my 8 year old daughter.
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That's a really clever fix. Vectrex controllers are getting harder to find. That's why I decided to build an adapter. You can build your own if you like: https://github.com/Kokovec/Vectrex-Playstation-2-Controller-Adapter
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The Vec uses three resistors in series (10K joy, 10K pot, 4.7K resistor) that are connected across +/-5V rails. The 10K pot is adjusted to swing between +/-2.5V (from what I remember). The output of the pots are sent through an ADC (successive approximation) so the +/-2.5V swing is critical to getting an accurate reading of the joystick.
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Reviewed by Metal Jesus:
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What were the arcades like back in 1982-1983?
Kokovec69 replied to Syzygy1's topic in Arcade and Pinball
I was 13 in '83 and remember riding my bike around town picking up empty bottles and aluminum cans to pay for my arcade habit. I grew up in a small town on Montreal's south shore where there was a mall with an arcade. It was carpeted but clean and always had the latest games. I had to ride my bike around 5 miles from my house, across a very busy highway, and cut across farmer's fields to get to the arcade. One time I came out of the arcade only to find that my bike was stolen. A few weeks later I found it tied to the same post it was originally stolen from! The arcade was such an awesome experience and a deeply embedded part of my childhood memories. I remember having to move the ashtrays that were sometimes sitting near the buttons. Those were different times indeed. -
Choreographed by a drunk Richard Simmons.
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You can also buy contact cleaner but be careful not spray it on plastic as it will fade and discolor. Usually when one of my carts starts to have issues I'll clean it with isopropyl using an old toothbrush. I'll also do the same to the console cart connector. If that doesn't work then I'll re-solder all of the PROM pins. I would stay away from abrasives although I wouldn't place Bar Keepers Friend in that category. Bar Keepers Friend uses oxalic acid and they warn not to use it on gold or silver. It also mitigates stainless steel corrosion through passivation but I'm not sure how that would affect nickel-gold or tin plated surfaces. It certainly leaves extremely light scratches on my cookware.
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I prefer the originals with the VFD screen. That's what made them so unique.
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What consoles would you like to see made as a flashback
Kokovec69 replied to maxdrive's topic in Dedicated Systems
I would love a plug-and-play system that emulates several of the 8-bit classic consoles (Atari, Vectrex, Sega) and provides cloud development tools to create homebrew games. You know, something that isn't an Android gaming console and has a built-in controller. -
I work with a few of the people that are trying to figure this all out and are actively developing industry standards to make sure it all holds together. HDR (@12 bit color depth) is the main topic of conversation along with higher frame rates for sports content (120fps good, 240fps better), more efficient compression codecs (like HEVC) as well as studies that show things like the best viewing distance from the screen (~6 feet), etc. Then there's the distribution problem. This is probably where the streaming vendors will have the advantage over cable and local broadcasters. In terms of infrastructure most broadcast facilities can't handle anything over 1080i. I've seen 8K TVs at trade shows and I have to say that I can't tell that I'm not looking at a 4K screen. But if the public wants it they get it.
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Totally agree! I was 12 in 1982 and remember all of those things and more. The arcade was the place to be but I also remember riding my bike around town to all of those local shops that housed an arcade game or two. The barber shop had Armor Attack. Galaxians at the TV repair shop. Pacman at pizza place... I also remember going to Sears or Canadian Tire to check out the latest from Atari or Commodore. No internet meant having to count on word of mouth, magazines and TV adverts to hear about new games and systems.