Blogs

My Second Ebook! (Not for free)

Alright so I’ve decided that I’m going to start a new, very large project. After the success I had when putting up my Ebook here on the forum I have decided that I will compile ALL of my reviews into one massive Ebook. Unlike with my previous Ebook, which just had 2600 games, I will be including reviews for everything. I will also be including write ups for each console as well to act as an introduction for each section of the book which will hopefully propel me over the one million character ma

Sunday at 02:54 PM

20th Anniversary of Dreamcast approaches

And nothing really seems to be going on with it lately. It would have been nice to see some sort of new game to celebrate the 20th anniversary, but it looks like it's not going to happen. I brought out my Dreamcast and hooked it up. It still works. Which is good because I went and ordered some Dreamcast games off eBay. They are all games I previously had but sold because I got uninterested in the Dreamcast. But I kept the system and 50+ games, which is good because I am interested in it again.

Sunday at 09:06 AM

Switched on POKEY

S.O.P. Track 10 - Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 In G Major-1st Movement

A major rewrite of the Arduino/Atari communication software was accomplished. It seems the Cassette Motor Control pin causes a spike when it switched. (You can hear it in some of the previous tracks.) BIT 7 of PORTA has been configured for output. Joystick 2 trigger can be used as BIT 7 if its ever needed. It took a couple of weeks of software trouble shooting to figure out that the hardware was the problem. The output power from the CMC was enough to trigger the optocoupler but

k-Pack

Saturday at 03:07 PM

Video Olympics (Atari)

It is very rare, in fact I daresay it has only happened once, where a game comes out that entirely kills the previous generation of games/consoles. In fact it only could happen once, and only in a market dominated by a single game… Pong. 1972-1977 was the age of Pong and Atari and Magnavox were, of course, at the forefront of it with oodles of copycats trailing behind. As 1977 rolled around though the public’s interest in Pong had no doubt waned considerably and as console manufacturers dumped t

Saturday at 12:06 PM

It's never too hot for golf

...especially when you're programming it in an air conditioned house. So I was working on Golf for the Channel F again. I was working all night from about 8pm to now. It's almost 1:30am here. I added two holes to the game. But when I started at the beginning, I broke hole 11 somehow. So most of my time tonight was spent trying to fix it. I finally did. I don't know how I did, either. So all that's needed to be done is add 5 more holes. It's getting really hard, since the code is 5,471 lines, not

Saturday at 08:27 AM

MegaManFan's Blog

Loot Goblin!

Gimme the loot! Gimme the loot!

MegaManFan

Saturday at 03:40 AM

MegaManFan's Blog

Genesis Does... or Analogue Mega Sg Does!

The Analogue Mega Sg doesn't just do what Nintendon't, it does what EVERYONE don't!

MegaManFan

Friday at 02:29 AM

Robin Gravel's Blog

Pitstop on Colecovision

I enjoyed this game.

Serguei2

Thursday at 04:18 PM

Insects!

Insects are everywhere. I saw an ant in my room. It was horrible. They've been on the kitchen counter for a while now, but not in my room. I went to work on Frank the Fruit Fly last night. I was having trouble with it. Whenever I died, there was this pixel up at the top of the title screen. I kept trying different things to get rid of it, nothing was helping. Until I realized that that pixel wasn't just a bug pixel, it was the pixel from the bottom of the snowflake. I had set the snowflake's y p

Thursday at 08:39 AM

EricBall's Tech Projects

making an app

YouTuber Tom Scott has just released a 16 episode series on making an app. (YouTube link behind the Spoiler.) I haven't watched the series (although I will), but IMHO the first question you need to ask yourself is what it's going to cost on an ongoing basis and how you plan on paying for it. For Slide Tilt Roll, the only ongoing costs were my Apple Developer ID* and a small website & domain name**, but something like Tom's failed messaging app is going to require s

EricBall

Wednesday at 03:43 PM

Home Run (Atari)

It is generally understood that many 2600 game simply don’t hold up, especially the earlier ones. Usually this was due to the fact that these were the first of their kind ever released on home console and the console itself was a very limiting factor. I initially wasn’t even going to review this game because I mainly try to steer clear of sports games on the 2600, usually because they’re nearly impossible to play and just aren’t that much fun, and I don’t like sports games in general. The only

Wednesday at 12:04 PM

Steve

This is Steve the kidney bean. I drew him for a mascot of the new newsletter thingy I'm working on called "Eli Ate My Kidney Beans." When I was a kid way back in 1995, I made these little newsletters for my friends. I still have most of them in a book form. But a lot of stuff has changed since then and I now have the internet so I can reach everyone around the world with my creations. Anyway, I wasn't sure he'd come out this well when I scanned the paper I drew him on. But

(Insert stupid Blog name here)

July 9

Vroom-vroom!

Yet more mini-arcade action! This time, it's all about racing games: Pole Position actually has a tiny little steering wheel... but it's actually just a steering wheel shaped joystick. No analog controls. Although for this version, analog isn't really needed. You also don't need to shift, the buttons just accelerate and brake, but really, adding shifting to something this small would be a little ridiculous. (Get it? A little ridiculous? ) It's hard to justify being picky on

Nathan Strum

July 9

MegaManFan's Blog

Retro Hunting at Ben's Game Zone

I visit Ben's Game Zone in Ralston, Nebraska tonight at 8 PM ET!

MegaManFan

July 8

Vampire: Master of Darkness (Sega)

There are few classic games series as well known as Castlevania. The original trilogy on the NES is infamous for its difficulty and is still beloved, and the SNES version is regarded as one of if not the best game in the series. Castlevania wasn’t just limited to Nintendo consoles early on; it had releases on both the Genesis and Turbografx-16 though they aren’t as well remembered. There were even releases for portable consoles, the Game Boy had several that are generally well regarded, but sadl

July 8

Frank the Fruit Fly update - July 2019

Worked on Frank the Fruit Fly some more. Sometimes when I went to the password screen, it was kind of messed up. Other times it worked perfectly. So I wanted a wonderful working password screen. So I thought I'd take a second stab at redesigning it. This is what I got. Since the redesign, it has been working fine. But that doesn't mean it will always. Pokemon Mini game programming problems seem to pop up and disappear whenever they feel like it. One thing I've also noticed is that the

July 8

My Ebook for free!

Alright so I decided to just release my Ebook for free here on the forum so here ya go. It comes in EPUB and MOBI flavors for Kindle users. 101 Reviews for the Atari the Good, the Bad, and the Weird.mobi 101 Reviews for the Atari the Good, the Bad, and the Weird.epub