MaximRecoil

Karate Champ was the first arcade game that I played regularly, in 1984 at the local laundromat. When people would pull down on the joysticks hard, the control panel would pull away from the front glass just enough for any quarters leaning against the glass to fall down into the cabinet. When the route operator would come around to collect the money, he would always find a bunch of extra quarters that weren't in the coin bucket because of that. I remember telling him how it happened because he couldn't figure it out; he was thinking there might be something wrong with the coin mechanism making some of the coins miss the bucket.

Your crystal ball is in need of repair. That doesn't have anything to do with my question. Irrelevance seems to be your thing... and attempts at crystal ball readings.

What of it? How did you find yourself even replying to my post, since you said nothing that was relevant to anything I said?

You wouldn't win at all against someone who's good at, say, Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat, by just bashing buttons, let alone win faster. You'd be lucky to even land a single hit, even if you played against him a thousand times in a row. I've seen other people say the same thing on other forums; it seems they've never played against anyone who wasn't a novice. In 1991 when I was 16 I was working next to a drug store that had a small arcade in the back of the store, and they had a Street Fighter II: The World Warrior machine. I started playing it a lot, but only against the computer, because there was hardly ever anyone else there. After a couple of weeks I thought I was getting pretty good at it, because I could get to Vega, who was one of the four unplayable boss characters, though not without continuing quite a few times. Then one night some guy walked in there and started playing against me, and I couldn't do anything against him. He easily countered everything I tried. I played him probably 20 times in a row without even winning a single round. I learned quite a bit from that session though, and I started going to Space Port in Bangor after that where there were lots of good players, to learn even more. Current me, or even 17-year-old me, could do the exact same thing against 16-year-old me that he did.

Thanks. In my case, after booting to the Harmony cartridge, when I turned the knob it would just move the selection indicator from the "[.]" to the last folder, skipping all other folders, and turning the knob in the other direction from there would just move it back to the "[.]", no matter how slightly I turned it. Even if I found the exact position where it would jump back and forth rapidly and automatically between two selection, it still skipped everything between the last folder and "[.]", plus the paddle's button wouldn't do anything. After reading your post I fiddled with it some more and I discovered that if I turned the knob CCW a little ways there was a point at which it would start moving the selection indicator correctly, and once you're at that point / in that range you can turn the knob in either direction and the selection indicator moves correctly (down for CW and up for CCW), and it doesn't skip any folders and the paddle button works to make a selection. So the paddle's knob needs to be about in the middle of its rotational travel to be in the right range to work correctly. When it's rotated almost all the way CW it will start moving the selection indicator again, but incorrectly, like I described in my first paragraph. Previously I was always turning the knob CW until the selection indicator moved, so I always ended up in the end-of-the-travel range where it doesn't work right.

What do you mean? Stella the emulator? I'm talking about navigating the Harmony cartridge menu. The Harmony cartridge manual says you can do it: It doesn't work for me though, not on any of the three consoles I tried it on.

I just tried it with an Atari 7800 and a 4-switch woodgrain 2600, as well as with a different pair of paddles, and they did the exact same thing as with my heavy 6-switch 2600. Menu navigation doesn't work with the paddles and it doesn't work in exactly the same way on all 3 consoles that I tested it on. The firmware version is 1.06.

I just got a new Harmony Encore in the mail yesterday. So far it works perfectly with a joystick but I can't navigate the menu with a paddle. The paddle moves the selection indicator, but not correctly. It only moves it back and forth between the "[.]" and the last folder, skipping all other folders, and the paddle's button doesn't do anything. Also, I can't even use the console's select and reset switches to navigate the menu like I can when a joystick is connected, because they are completely non-responsive. So the only way I can play a paddle game is to navigate to and start it with the joystick and then unplug the joystick and plug in the paddles (which work fine in the games, just not in the menu).

At some point in the 1990s. It still should have had at least composite output like the TRS-80 and Apple II did, which were both released the same year as the 2600 (1977). The original NES frontloader had composite video output in 1985, which was still before the vast majority of people in North America had a display with composite video input. They were thinking ahead, and I'm glad they did, because even though I had no use for the NES's composite video jack in the 1980s, I do now.

There should have been a minimum of 2 buttons on the controller. They should have ditched the Color/B&W switch, which is nearly useless, and put a pause switch there instead, which is very useful. There should have been at least a composite video output in addition to RF. The joysticks should have been designed like arcade joysticks, i.e., a single, fairly strong spring around the shaft for snappy self-centering, a restrictor for a positive stop at the end of the travel, and good quality leaf switches or microswitches. Compare a CX-40 to say, an IL/Happ Competition joystick; the difference is night and day.

That's different than the TIA I tested. His tank is green like it's supposed to be rather than blue. His player 1 score is blue on the tops and bottoms of the numbers but is green on the sides, which is weird, but starting at 0:32 the parts that were blue have turned green, though a slightly different shade of green than the sides of the numbers. This is from the start of the video: And this is from the 0:32 mark: My player 1 score numbers are uniformly blue, and the tank is blue too. The rest of the colors are the same as with the original TIA chip installed. Yeah, I've read that before, but if the colors change on any of my six 2600s or my 7800 then it's too slight for me to notice it.

It being emulation is a deal killer for me. It not having analog video outputs would be a deal killer too, had the deal not already been killed by emulation. One of the best things about the 2600 hardware is its responsiveness (no frame buffer, so no input lag). I can tell the difference in responsiveness when playing 2600 games in Stella, especially with games that I've played a lot on real hardware since childhood, like Space Attack. To make matters worse it only has a digital video output, which means you get display lag to go on top of your input lag. Even if you use a digital-to-analog video signal converter and connect it to a CRT, you'll still get display lag because the digital signal has to be processed; it can't directly drive the CRT's electron guns like an analog video signal does.

They changed the picture when they went to the 4-switch design. With those there's a picture of a "heavy fourer." It looks like they just retouched the original picture of the heavy sixer. The 4-switch "Vader" design had a completely new picture on the box.

No. If it did change I would consider that a problem in and of itself, since the colors don't noticeably change on any of my 2600s regardless of how long they are left on. Doesn't the color pot have a global effect on colors? In the case of this particular TIA, only the tank and player 1 score are the wrong color. The ground, aliens, and shields are all the right color. But I don't want to change the color pot adjustment to try to compensate for a weird TIA when the colors are already correct with the original TIA. Well, it's definitely the TIA causing the wrong colors in this case. I only installed it to test the TIA itself; I didn't install it to try to fix anything because there's nothing to fix; the 2600's colors are perfectly fine with its original TIA installed. That looks like a useful program, but I don't have any way to use it at the moment. I ordered a Harmony cartridge a few days ago but I don't have it yet. It shipped yesterday.

I tested a TIA chip I just got in my 6-switch 2600, and in Space Invaders the tank and player 1's score are blue: Those are normally green on all my 2600s, in the Stella emulator, and in the screenshot in the manual. Is this TIA defective or do some variations of it naturally produce different colors? This is: AMI 8317MCC C010444D-01 C04075 Philippines In a 2-player game the second player's tank is light green, same color as the second player's score.