Tony J Case

Well, I tried flipping all the A/B switches to both positions and the lil guy won't move to the right an inch. Hell, I even tried the color switch just for fun - no luck. And when I mean the first screen, I mean the intro/demo screen, this one not the actual gameplay one

I've run into a couple of oddities playing the plus, new bugs in old games that werent there before. For example when playing Alien, the "power pellets" (or whatever the hell the star things are) are suppose to turn the Xenomorphs blue, like your typical Pac Man Ghost. But on the Plus? The blue vulnerable phase is less than a second, barely a blink, then they're right back to normal. And then with Spike's Peak, the little dude that starts out on the mountain? He doesn't go right (which is how you're suppose to start the game). And I know I've played Spike's Peak before! Has anyone else seen games behaving oddly?

Yikes, talk about a blast from the past! I haven't thought about these discs in ages and age and ages! They've been sitting on the back of my shelf for some 10-ish years now (tho it feels more like 100 ) The only hitch I can think of in getting you guys copies - I've swapped computers several times since 2009, and I'm not sure if my current blu-ray drive can burn discs! Let me play with it a bit over the weekend and see if I can get magic to happen. . . .

Well, the difference between 25 bucks and 34 bucks isn't THAT huge (especially when you figure in a couple bucks tax on the 25) - so looks like I'm saving a trip to Toy R Us! Thanks Gary!

Crap, now I got an excuse to head out on Black Friday - Toys R Us is selling FB3 for 25 bucks, according to their ad: http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/BlackFridayScans/ToysRUs/26 (page 26 if you have to find it by hand)

While I'm not an expert or anything, it's probably that my super-advanced, high-tech TV doesn't like Atari. I found another console at a friends that I was able to test out with - same problem, same solution. Ah well - I dont mind flicking back and forth on the channels, and it'll just be something I have to keep an eye out for in the future when I get a new TV.

So does Radio Shack still have 2600 games? I remember some 10 years ago or so, at the end of the 90's, that they had some you could special order. Do they still do that? Or is that LONG gone now?

When I was unloading a whole bunch of used books, I stopped in over at Urban Outfitters next door and found THIS for five bucks. It's a cheap plastic Christmas ornament and not at all glass, but it still looked pretty cool. And seriously, how can I pass it up for half off?

Well, it would seem that changing the channel and putting it back clears up the sync issue about 50% of the time. Sometimes I have to swap back and forth several times, but I can get my Atari fix in color without crawling behind the TV. Huzzah!

I'll bite - where is this, anyway?

Heh, thanks. So it's got to be my television. When I did as you suggested - try my 2600 on a normal TV (fortunately we were moving and one got dredged up from the basement in the process). The games looked fine on there, color and everything. And then when I plugged back into my big screen, the very first time I turned on the console - BAM! Color! Everything looked like it should. But if I turn off the Atari and power back on, I lose the color and we're back to the missing lines of pixels again. Unplug the Atari from the set and put it back? We get color again! So it's got to be something with the set not syncing up with the signal output or something. Annoying - I'll have to pick my Atari games CAREFULLY, if I dont want to get my fat ass up from the couch and unplug my rig.

So I'm trying to hook up my 2600 to my Mitsubishi big screen TV. I've gotten the phono-to-f adapter from Radio Shack (it's not the one mentioned on the "So you want to hook up your Atari" page, it's a 278-253, male to Coaxial adapter - but I'm fine, since I had a female to female RCA adapter hanging about). I've gotten it hooked up through the antenna - and I successfully get a signal. . . well, kinda sorta. the display is only in black and white, regardless of what setting the B&W/Color switch is at. If the Atari is set to B&W, the picture looks fine (alibit in black and white). If the switch is set to color, the display looks weird - like it only shows every other vertical line of pixels. Is this an artifact of using the wrong adapter? A wrong setting on the TV? Is my Atari borked? Any thoughts on what might be up? I'll post a picture of what the "color" screen looks like, if that'll be of any help.

So what ever happened to the project? Did it die on the vine?

Hey - sorry about not responding. Life got busy and somehow I wound up putting off checking here tome and again (in other words, if you want, send a PM - that drops me an email and reminds me to get my lazy butt here!) Shipping to canada, as I suspected, isnt all that much more. It's only like 3 bucks or thereabouts to ship north of the border. So lets call it 18 for a set.

I've never seen the show, but this looks as good a place as any - I saw an old 2600 in Wall-e. It was tucked away in the 80's treasures section. It was only briefly in the background, but clearly an Atari.