It was three years ago that I joined Atari Age. Since then, I've got 198 games thanks to the people on here (thank you!) the rest coming from either Value Village or the used game store. And it'll be four years ago this September that I got my very first 2600. I guess the highlight of my time here is getting GoSub into the AA Store, albeit for a limited time. Well, anyway, I hope to get more games from all you nice people that have been in the scene for way longer than me. And although I have we
While I was finished with the program, I wasn't completely thrilled with it. The "press 1 to go first" and "press 2 to go second" messages stayed on throughout the whole game. So, I went back to programming the game. It took about an hour or two, but I finally got those messages off once play begins. So, now I'm happy with the way things have been going regarding this game, but if I look at the game for a longer period, I might see some things I want to change. I'm a perfectionist, even when it
I keep forgetting there's more than just the Pen Panic mode on here. But since it's the only one I've tried so far, I'm going to review this and nothing else. There's also some other different games I'll get to (if) I ever finish Pen Panic mode (ha!) So you probably guessed by now it's hard. I was drawn in by level 1's easiness, but level 3 is as tough as nails. I finally beat that sucker and then quit playing (for now.) The object in Pen Panic is simple: either draw bouncy lines to guide Dood,
So I finally got around to watching an episode off that SMB3 DVD set that I got off the internet about a month or so ago, which in turn inspired me to continue work on issue 1 of my Super Mario Bros. 3 comic that I'm doing. I figure by the time I get this done, it will probably be mid next year at the rate I'm going! So, after a month of not working on it, drew four pages' worth yesterday and today, two of those pages are rewrites of page 1 (I decided to stretch the original page 1 into two sepa
I went a little overboard today. Just got home with 4 new PS2 games. Well, new to me, anyway, they are used. Atari Anthology. Why did I get this when I probably have all the 67 2600 games it boasts? I don't know. It also has arcade versions, too. Pinball Hall of Fame: Gottlieb and Williams. Why did I do this when I have Williams on 3DS and Gottlieb on GC? I don't play my 3DS or GC often. Especially the 3DS since I lost the cord to recharge it. Plus, Pinbot is a childhood favorite of mine. I play
Well, now I know that Insecticide will NOT be 4 MBits. I have passed that limit. Well, right now I'm at it, and I've yet to add the special moves of the other characters, which, except for Rumblebee, will require me to update the sprite sheets, which will have extra data, which will probably boost up the size past 4 Mbits. And now I'm having trouble compiling a 8 MBit game. I did what I thought was right, and it displayed my game as 533KB, which is not right. It should either display the size as
So I worked on GoSub for the Intellivision again tonight. I added a few things. First, I added a game over screen. Now when you die for the final time, the maze disappears, you get a "game over" message in the middle of the screen and your octopus count and stuff are still down at the bottom. Second, I got pretty tired of the crashing sound being a dull one note music, so I experimented for about 15 minutes trying to find a good crashing sound effect. The game is changing day by day here. I also
So I worked for a few hours on I Like Bacon for the Odyssey 2. I was trying to add Voice support to it. My Voice module isn't working terribly well. I need to screw it back together but I lost the screws for it since I unscrewed it a long time ago and I don't know what I did with the screws when I unscrewed it. But anyway, when I plugged it in and turned it on, it kept telling me "EEEEEEEEEEEE." Finally got that to go away, but it kept not wanting to choose a different voice bank even though I t
So I worked on my 4-hour-long song yesterday. I got up to the 4 minute mark. I'm recording me playing the song as I compose it. I just completed the cover for my soon to get binder for it where I will store the sheet music for it. I write down the notes and then I put them in proper note notation as soon as I'm done recording myself playing them, because I might think of a way to make the song better while I'm playing it. So I write it on blank sheet music because computers can break and then I'
I've always wondered what this song was about, ever since I first saw the title of it on the internet a few years back. Well, I ran across it at a flea market and bought it. Thinking it was something like "He stole my chick away, he is going to pay" you know, something like that, it was a big let down to learn that the "He" he is referring to is none other than God. Ah well, now to find "If" by Perry Como. Actually, "If" is a pretty popular song title. Bread recorded a different song called If,
Here's another update of the roulette game I'm working on. I know a roulette game using Batari Basic shouldn't take up 8k, but here it is anyway. (note: It's actually more around 5k) Added the odd/even number option. Up next: Choose your own number!
After ten months of not having anything Atari 2600, I went to Value Village this morning, and to my surprise, there were 12 Atari 2600 games. They were ones I already had, though, and were horribly overpriced, but just to support the cause of selling Atari 2600 games (there were some boxed Inty games, too, like Sea Battle.) I got an Atari version of Othello. Put it into the Atari 2600, and it worked! It beat the heck outta me before I turned it off in disgust, but at least it worked. So, friends
So I think I'm going to do a quarterly magazine. The pages will be 8 inches tall and 5.5 inches wide (half a sheet of 8.5x11 paper.) and there will be 36 of them. So what I want to do for the first issue is make a special Nintendo history issue, which most of the first issue will be devoted to telling. But why I'm telling you this is because I need someone to proofread the early days part (especially the pre-NES part) since I wasn't alive or in diapers when this stuff came out. So right now, I'm
I went to a few music stores today. I got this harmonica but when I blew into it, I got a little bit of grit or something in my mouth. It was a cheap one. Went to another one and bought a harmonica for $25, but this one was better. I could actually play the F note. I've been writing little songs (under 10 seconds) for a while now. Here's one I wrote because I wanted to play the didgeridoo in one, so I wrote about a guy from Australia just so I could put it in there. I call it "Aussie Osbourne,"
I just got two 3DS games. I've reviewed Boulder Dash XL-3D and you can view it here: http://www.atari2600land.com/3ds/ and I also got Crush, which I will open and play sometime next week. I forgot about my 3DS and haven't been playing it at all lately. It's been like a month since I last did Luigi's Mansion 2. Turn it on and lo and behold it still has 3 bars of power left even though I haven't used it at all in a month. I also got Pikmin 2 for the Gamecube as well as Lumines for the PS2, so I ha
I worked basically all morning on this, Woke up at 5 am, only pausing to go to the flea market, and immediately got back to work when I got home. And I think I finally got it working at noon or so after 2 tries. I worked on Reindeer again. What I did was make Santa ride the reindeer like a horse once you get to it. I made a new sprite for reindeer-riding Santa and I changed the other sprite. That's basically it. You'd think that wouldn't take as long as it did. But it did. But I think I'm done.
So I was cruising eBay when I came across a 6-game Game Gear lot. I didn't have any of them. One of the games was Battletoads, which I have seen going around $15 for just it loose. So I paid $23.99 for all 6 games, and the lot included Shinobi II. It was an auction/buy it now listing. I could have waited 6 days and take my chances and put up a $10 bid, but I didn't want to do that. I snagged it right away. So I'm super excited that I came across and snagged it. Six games for $24 comes out to $4
So I decided to work on Boney McBones again. One of the things that I wanted to do was to have an animated character instead of just a square or triangle. So I turned to the little Odyssey 2 man. It took me a few hours working on this, but in the end, I had to figure out a roundabout way to display him on different y positions. It takes up probably way more code than it should, but it works. Then I thought about the title screen. It looked a little bland. So I put the little Odyssey 2 man on the
So someone at the Odyssey 2 forums I frequent had a suggestion on how to change different banks: Cal the bank twice. So after putting that in and changing the code around (which took a while, I broke it putting the bank calling twice in. It's at the stage where if I were to add the slightest thing to the existing code, it goes nuts), I finally got it working. And my sick Voice unit is having troubles still, but it keeps working if I hit it hard enough down into the cartridge slot. I think the pr
So the fireplace people and the heater people are both coming tomorrow morning. It would be interesting if they both came at the same time. And on Friday, I have to go to the doctor even though nothing is wrong with me. And on Saturday is the flea market. Tomorrow I have the job of keeping the dog in my room with me while the people are here fixing the fireplace. Right now she's asleep on the couch. I am in the den typing this because I was working on creating a crossword puzzle. I am half way d
So I thought even Tempest would be even too hard for me. So I decided on a version of the Secret Government Waffle Project. Replace the waffles with oranges and you get Oranges. The title screen took at least 3 hours to do, and I haven't even put music in yet. I had to make the letters part of the background picture data and then insert them in the tile map. I found Game Boy programming is a lot like Game Gear programming when it comes to background graphics. If only there was a way to make the
So the cable box quit working this morning. We had to drive out to the Xfinity store and switch our set top box for a new one. While there, there was an f.y.e. store next to it. I went in and got a new DVD: Ancient Aliens season 10 volume 2. I had doubted they'd have it, but they did. No Animaniacs DVD sets though. So we went home and it was a total nightmare hooking it up. We waited two hours for no reason. Mom called the people and it started working. It's working now except I can't sync the
So I tried with fireworks ablaze last night, to make Frank the Fruit Fly move on Pokemon Mini, but I had to give up and go to sleep with a broken game. I finally woke up at about noon, after my daily 12 hours of sleep, and worked on it again. FINALLY got it working, but I don't know how or why, the code I wrote doesn't make any logical sense, but it works anyway. Right now the game is 12.1 k. Once I reach 64k, I have to start with bankswitching stuff again. Whoopee. I tried but failed on the Gam
I worked a whole lot on this last night. I went to sleep at midnight. Couldn't get to sleep until 1am. Then I slept for about 14 hours. It's kind of sad when you wake up and realize the day is almost over. Anyway, I have changed the name of the game from "Eating" to "Yum". I enjoy looking at my old Nintendo Power issues (circa 1993 or so). Finding games in the Pak Watch section that never got released ("Mario Vs. Wario", anyone?) The object of the game is simple: To open the guy's mouth to eat
For my long song collection on vinyl. I have a whole bunch of songs over 15 minutes on vinyl, but there are two records I'm really looking for and can't find anywhere, despite the fact that I have them on CD. Why do I want these? Because I thought they'd be the easiest to find (I guess not!) I got Renaissance's "Scheherezade" last weekend, but forgot to look for my most wanted:
RUSH - Caress of Steel
GENESIS - Foxtrot
Of course, if you have these on vinyl and want to get rid of them, PM
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