Max-T

Hey guys, I recently acquired the Music Machine 12" vinyl at a thrift store. Both the vinyl itself and its jacket, the mini-comic book inside the gatefold and a loose, double-sided B/W advertising insert for "The Agapeland Series" are in as close to mint condition as any record of that age which I own. It looks practially brand-new save for a set of fingerprints on one side of the vinyl and the usual smattering of dust. I know that the Music Machine record was sold at Christian stores separately from the game, so I am guessing that many, many more of the vinyl copies exist now than do the carts. The MM game has a 10 rarity rating here, so that seems very likely... So, my question is, does the MM vinyl have any worth beyond your average 30+ year old album? Since they were sold separately from the game carts, I can imagine that there may be some owners of the carts who do not have the vinyl, or that some may possess ones of lower quality to the one I just found. I paid 50 cents for it at Goodwill, and if it is only worth half a dollar, I'll keep it -- I and my brother had a (considerably scratched-up) copy of the album when we were kids. If it's worthless I'll simply keep it as nostalgia. Thanks in advance for any advice you might have. I've been away from the Atari scene for a few years, and it's cool to dip my toe back in. You all have been very helpful to me in the past, and I thank you for your time!

Wow, thanks for that answer, you did a lot of work. I agree that the English is difficult to understand. The guy who posted the song on Youtube thought the line was "The table will turn around, you see" for that line that you heard as "the terror..." I think that makes sense. It's the difficulty that the Japanese have with the "L" sound versus the "R" since their language does have a true "L" phoneme, I suppose. I actually managed to find a copy of that CD from some store in Japan and ordered it at a ludicrous price. Obviously if there is a lyrics sheet it would only be in Japanese, but maybe I can scan and OCR it and try Google Translate. But thanks very much -- I wasn't expecting a response but it's much appreciated!

This is a long shot and I hope I'm not posting in an inappropriate forum. One of my favorite arcade games as a teen was Twin Eagle, the helicopter combat game. In the bonus stages the machine would play this really cool sampled clip from a guitar rock type song. Just a few seconds of guitar and one line in English that was looped a few times. I don't know if any of you guys remember the game. Anyway, I just found the whole song on Youtube: "Early Warning" from Twin Eagle It's half in Japanese and half in sketchy English. I was wondering if anyone out there speaks Japanese and could tell me what those parts translate into. The song is so obscure and rare that there are no lyrics on the Internet, or I'd try Google Translate or Babelfish. It was released around 1989 on CD in Japan only, so I'll be lucky to ever find a copy and even if I do the lyrics insert obviously wouldn't be in English. Thanks for any help, and even if you know no Japanese, check out the song -- it's a terrific piece of late '80s cheese.

Sold. My Xbox-loving friends are going to be wondering why I'll be bringing my Heavy Sixer to their next Halo party. This is cool!

I remember reading before Guitar Hero: World Tour came out that they had initially planned to have a keyboard in the game, but that it was removed during development because the designers thought that adding an extra instrument would make the game too complex (and probably too expensive as well). But the GH: WT drum set does have a MIDI port, and both World Tour and Guitar Hero 5 have you occasionally playing synthesizer lines using the guitar controller, so maybe there is hope. As someone else who owns a number of MIDI synths, I'd love to be able to use a professional keyboard with a nice action to play one of the future GH or Rock Band games, but even if they made you buy a cheap plastic controller to play the game I'd still be in.

Have you thought about pulling and selling the SID chips from your dead C64s? The SIDs are in pretty high demand from people (like me) that are into vintage synthesizers. Have a look at this: http://www.hardsid.com/ This web site sells WinXP-compatible sound cards based on the SID chip, but they can not even sell their own cards with a full complement of SID chips. Because SIDs that are still operational on all three channels are hard to come by. I have also seen a product called "SIDStation" (which is a standalone synthesizer based on the SID chip) sell on eBay for like $800. If you have C64s which don't work due to video or CPU problems, make sure you don't throw them away before you check the SIDs. They could be worth a lot of money.

461MB does seem to be a bit much for what you get in the Doom 3 demo. I can only assume that much of space is used for high-res textures, but those of us who don't own $4000 brand-new computers won't be able to see the benefits of those. But I'm glad there is finally a demo out -- I now know that even though my PC can run it OK at lower quality settings, the game seems too boring and unoriginal to warrant buying the full version. I'll go back to playing my old copy of Doom II now...

Kepone Just did a deal with him and he was very cool to deal with (even though it took me way longer to pay him than it should have). Thanks!

Thanks to everyone! Just wanted to let everybody know that there is no problem. I had offered to Kepone, and actually requested, that he keep the cartridge because I felt bad about taking so damn long to pay him what I owed him. If anyone got the impression that it was Kepone that wanted to keep the game, it was the other way around -- he was insisting on sending it to me. But I honestly wanted to offer him the chance to keep it and sell it someone else if he wanted to. Kepone was very polite at every stage of the transaction, and he did absolutely nothing wrong. The entire incident was my fault, due to a problem with a Paypal payment, then even more delay after I had to wait through the Labor Day weekend to send him a money order. I just wanted to clear this up -- Kepone is sending me the cart, and I'm perfectly satisfied. Sorry this had to turn into such a big deal. So just for the record, Kepone is in my recommended traders list (which I'll be posting in regards to in that thread) and everything worked out fine. I'm just sorry again to him that it took so long to get him his money, and I apologize to everyone else who got caught up in the 'argument'. Thanks!

I caught nearly all of the PBS program, and while I did find it entertaining enough to keep watching, I was a little disappointed with the direction of the show. I had visited PBS's web site for the show, which had a decent (if basic) timeline of video games, and a cool audio quiz of classic game sounds. I had expected more of a historical and technological perspective, whereas I left with the impression that the producers were more intent on making a program that dealt with societal issues -- which is fine -- just not what I had gone in expecting. But in any case, it's always nice when classic gaming gets any sort of public acknowledgement. I'd love to see more shows soon with in-depth interviews from the titans of the early gaming industry while they're still able...

I'm 28 -- surprised to see that I'm actually a bit under the median here. My family got an Atari when I was not even 4 years old, and I kept it until middle school. It's only been in the last year or so that I've gotten back into classic gaming, but I'm increasingly finding that I like the average old game better than the average new one.

Not a dumb question at all. That's why we're all here. Stella can use most game port or USB-based PC controllers. All you have to do is go through the options in the emulator and make sure that you have the sticks and buttons on your controller properly assigned to the 'virtual joystick' in Stella. Feel free to PM me if you need details on how to do that. I don't mind! I have been through at least half a dozen different controllers of different sorts for my PC -- Gravis, Microsoft, Saitek, you name it. I don't know really anything about the company (cause I traded for the converter box from a friend) but I have been the most satisfied (for all kinds of games, Atari 2600--> GTA: Vice City) using my Sony DualShock controller. I got this USB-port converter, lemme see, it's called "SuperJoyBox3". I suppose I could look up the company's name by looking at the driver files, if anyone cares to know. Anyway, just for Atari games, you'd probably do well to use a standard (non-analog) Gravis GamePad, or similar $10 4-button gamepad that you can get at BestBuy or WalMart. If you are looking for a controller to use on vintage games as well as modern PC games, I'd recommend a dual-analog + digital unit. I know Gravis and Microsoft make examples of this type, can't remember the names, sorry. But if you can find one of these SuperJoyBoxes, it's a freaking steal. I got mine in exchange for a Gamevube controller (which means that my buddy must not've paid more than $30 for it). And you can use your PSX grey controller on it. It even has the vibration function intact. For my money, Sony made the best controller ever. But that's another topic entirely. Good luck!

I've founf that easiest way to hook an Atari (or other classic game machines) is buy a direct adapter from Radio Shack, which will allow you to connect the female RCA jack from the end of the Atari's game cable, then provides a standard crew-on coax jack onto the other end. Here's a link to that part: http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?cata...%5Fid=278%2D255 There are advantages and disadvantages to doing it this way. The bad part is (unless you also use a coax spliter) that you will only be able to have your Atari hooked up, or the cable TV line, but not both simultaneously. (I have a separate TV for gaming which is not hooked up to my CATV, so that issue is moot in that case.) The upside of a direct connection is that there will much less RF interference and better color fidelity. I almost forgot to mention -- don't try to use an auto-switching selector between your Atari and TV. Ataris' output signals are too weak to properly trigger an auto-switch (like the one that came with the NES). The direct connector is the way to go, IMHO. If you want to try this out, and if you have any more questions, please feel free to PM me for futher help. Good luck!

Sorry, I can't help you with a PAL-format mod, but I recently bought a 7800 with composite A/V out for NTSC, so I bet that if a PAL version does not yet exist, it will soon be coming. Good luck!

OK, so shoot me; Raft Rider was one of my favorite 2600 games. Yeah, maybe they put more work into the label art than into the game prog itself, but what the hell, I was ten years old. I vote Raft Raider!