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Showing content with the highest reputation on 10/14/2019 in all areas

  1. Just sayin'. Isn't it weird how some people feel the need to make everything into tribal warfare? As if one unreleased retro thing MUST "compete" against another unreleased retro thing, because people can't have more than one, or neither? Rivals for the "ATARI VCS" include, but are not limited to: Cheap Windows PC AppleTV Hoop and stick Wooden paddle with elastic string and ball Fond memories of middle school in the 1980s Nintendo SIXTY-FOOOOOOUUUUURRRRR Cheap Chinese clone consoles Xbox one Playstation 4 (or maybe the 5 will be out by then) Demolition crew for GameStop retail stores Animal husbandry Baking a cake Learning a language Piano lessons Playing outside Smoking in the sun to accelerate cancer growth Sitting quietly and awaiting death
    17 points
  2. If Atari SA did that, they'd be setting an industry record: first console release in history with zero titles available at launch. You probably could gamify getting the LED to go on and off depending on what you did with the power cable, though, so it might not count. I'm trying to figure out whether completion of the VCS is dependent on John Phelan's faith in the project, or if it's the other way round. Perhaps it's a codependent relationship. Andy's right; the PR has been woeful. Along with the faked screenshots and gameplay, repeatedly-missed deadlines, inability to deal with the press effectively, Stalinesque removal of reddit content deemed uncomplimentary, and about 17,362 other things I'm forgetting that Atari SA did which led to one insider describing the whole thing as a "shitshow".
    10 points
  3. Completely Ass Systems I survived the Great Console Wars of the early 80's. (circus) Charlie had me pinned down... We all had our system biases back then, but as we got older, we all got curious about those other systems we never had, and we enjoy them all now.They're all our children now.
    10 points
  4. one might say that those are their.... biggest fans.
    10 points
  5. 9 points
  6. 9 points
  7. Look carefully at the photos. Both fans are never seen in the same shot at the same time. There's only one fan; they just keep moving it around to give the illusion that they're a real company that can afford more than one. This could very well be the Zapruder film of the entire Ataribollocks(tm) saga. We may just be on to something here.
    9 points
  8. At no point did anything about this project ever look awesome or promising.
    9 points
  9. I'm sorry, what are you trying to say? That a less powerful system that can't handle modern games and won't be focused on entertainment isn't going to be for more than retro games but will be about so much more? Did you grow up under power lines?
    8 points
  10. http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test13.zip http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test13-src.zip Fixed horizontal position being slightly off when Alt+Shift+clicking in the debugger. Change default overscan setting to Normal. Add H.264 + MP3 recording setting to work around an apparently long-standing and unavoidable bug in the Microsoft AAC Encoder, which introduces random oink errors into the encoded stream. Strangely this bug seems to exist in all versions of Windows that have this encoder (7-10), and has also been reported in SDK samples and OBS Studio. ? Update some video recording error dialogs to new style. Add bluish-white phosphor setting. The 'yr' and 'yw' debugger commands now take ? as the path, too. Add /reset switch to allow for selective settings reset. I'll throw it on the list. Don't think it's OS, as I've upgraded to 18632.418 without seeing this issue. But I'm not exactly sure what might be going on here. It sounds like a crash that is also bypassing the crash handler, which makes it difficult to get info without a debugger. But if it's in the program, then I'm not sure how it would have gone unnoticed for so long until now. Window layouts are one thing that come to mind -- you can try /reset:windowlayouts on 3.90-test13 to nuke the window layouts for both default operation and the debugger and see if that helps. If that doesn't work, launch with /portabletemp to have the emulator launch with clean settings in-memory to see if one of the existing settings might be a problem. If it still crashes, then we can try to fish the crash report out of the Reliability Monitor if Windows Error Reporting is seeing it (View Reliability History in Start search on the latest Windows 10 version).
    8 points
  11. So the game has gone off to Al and CPUWiz for the PRGE event - can't wait to see the feedback ?? [Update] Cart has been built and tested ?
    8 points
  12. Yea I had been saying from very early on, forget the stupid console, I have a billion ways to play netflix and pac-man I want the controller. But of course recent event's show us its just a thumbstick in a box so now I don't, but they had an idea and entered a quagmire
    7 points
  13. No joke, the case looked nice (even if it makes me hungry for tacos), the controllers looked nice (mainly because they're aping off of the Atari 2600 and Xbox 360 controller designs), and the mockups of their still-vaporware Linux OS looked pretty nifty (almost like some of the menu themes for Launchbox, RetroPie and Lakka). Despite all of the snark I have deposited here, and all of it yet to be placed here at the malign and expensive of Fred Chesnais, his fellow founders of Atari Gamebox LLC, Atari SA and their ever-faithful following of Flavor-Aid drinkers, I think what they promised looked awesome, but nothing of the project or ongoing damage control dumpster fires updates look awesome or promising.
    7 points
  14. Mmmmmmm, I don't know Tommy Beefy. This bag fan looks pretty sweet! Hold on! A shot from the other side of the room reveals another one. TWO big fans? I'm impressed. Lastly, I know it's a little digression ... but here is what proper news looks like. CLICKTY-CLICK
    7 points
  15. I finally had a chance to read through this thread. There are a LOT of TI-specific limitations that the original poster does not seem to grasp. First, you have to deal with the memory map of the 99/4A. Any BASIC other than the console BASIC is dependent upon two to three hardware factors. First, the cartridge port only occupies 8K of the system map. It is possible to add additional 8K bank-switched blocks, but for setting up a ROM-only BASIC, all of your tokens and their trampolines would have to be in that first 8K. The code for your routines could be in other 8K blocks though. This assumes you are using Assembly for everything--and that your Assembly code has been optimized to work in a bank-switched memory space. Note that you also need to deal with the way memory is otherwise allocated in the system. Low memory (mentioned several times in this thread) is an 8K space where existing Extended BASIC extension code resides. High memory is a 24K space where your BASIC code lives. You also have about 12K of space in the video memory space that can be used to hold strings and other variables. These spaces are not generally mutable. Use of a SAMS memory card allows you to bank switch in both the low memory area and the high memory area, but you have to make sure your program keeps track of where everything is in those spaces. TI got around many of these limitations by using GPL and GROM chips to store code and programs. The cartridge port generally supports five GROM chips in a group that each store up to 8K of GPL code. Now combining the five GROMs and the cartridge 8K ROM space allows us to create things like TI Extended BASIC V100 (withdrawn in 1981 due to some significant errors in the math routines), Extended BASIC V110 (Last version from TI--and it still contains a few errors in the trigonometric functions). Note that both of these use a combination of ROM and GROM, Assembly code in the ROM (12K, as it bank-switches half of the space), and GPL in the GROMs. RXB, Triton Super Extended BASIC, Tony Knerr's XB 2.7, and Mechatronic Extended BASIC and Extended BASIC II+ all use the same ROM code TI used, as all of their code changes were in the GPL code contained in the GROMs. Winfried Winkler's Expanded BASIC 3 made changes to both the ROM and the GROM code (and uses four ROM banks instead of two). Some of those changes were to add functions, some were to change memory usage (the cartridge has some limited support for SAMS memory and expects a 32K memory space by default, but will run on a bare console), and some were to correct issues with the trigonometric functions from TI. The Assembly versions of basic (Myarc BASIC 2.12 and Cortex BASIC) don't use GPL. Myarc BASIC runs in a specialized memory space in the 128K/256K/512K card, leaving the normally available 32K memory space open for programs (24K for programs and 8K for Assembly subprogram suport, IIRC). Cortex BASIC runs from cartridge space and part of the 32K space--leaving a much smaller space available for programs. Programs written for either of these will run a LOT faster than programs written for the other TI BASIC/Extended BASIC variants. On pixel graphics, there are several options: Mechatronic Extended BASIC II+ includes the APESoft expanded graphics routines that give access to Bitmap Graphics modes. These routines were also available in Austria/Switzerland/Germany as APESoft Expanded Grafics BASIC and in the US as Amerisoft Expanded Graphics BASIC. The Mechatronic and separate versions were loaded into the 8K low memory space. Cortex BASIC has the necessary routines as well. There are also several external packages that add help here, many of which have already been identified in the thread. Cortex BASIC source code is based on BASIC for the Powertran Cortex, which is a derivative of TI-990 Power BASIC. This would probably be a good starting point if someone really had the time to try and create a full Assembler version of TI BASIC. Don't even think of trying to tie me to that task, as my programming skills are limited to BASIC and a little bit of Pascal. Logo/Logo II are TI cartridges that add another programming language to the TI. Very little was written for this environment, but it is interesting in that there are versions of the cartridge in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish, making it a very suitable language for teaching children to program. The Arcadeshopper store has new-manufactured Cortex BASIC, XB 2.7, Winkler Expanded BASIC 3, Triton Super Expanded BASIC, and RXB 2015 cartridges available. I can also supply any of the above cartridges. The really important thing to understand with any attempt to completely rewrite Extended BASIC is that almost all versions are dependent upon GPL to leave enough memory space open to be able to actually write programs. This means BASIC will be slow, really slow. Cortex BASIC is the only current dialect completely written in Assembler--and it leaves much less open space for programmers to actually write their programs. More importantly, it is not compatible with any of the other BASIC dialects for the TI. It also has very few programs written specifically for it at this point in time. Rewriting ANY of these BASIC dialects is not a project for the casual programmer. It also requires a programmer committed to the project, something the available programmers on this forum have pretty much avoided saying. If YOU want this to come to life, you'll have to dedicate yourself to completing it. Others may help you with specific elements when you get stuck, but that's about all of the help you can hope for. Rich has been asking for help rewriting the XB ROMs for years--and getting nowhere. That is a much smaller undertaking than you are asking for here. . . Auf Deutsch: niemand Hier moechte sowas machen, da der Aufwand ist viel zu Gross und am Ende, kaum Jemand wird es benuetzen. Leider.
    7 points
  16. My times for the week: Atari 2600: Pursuit of the Pink Panther - 22 min. NES: Tetris 2 - 741 min. Needed a mindless narcotic game, so I beat Tetris 2 on Hi speed.
    6 points
  17. OMFG, can't tell if you're serious or not. I'll assume you are. Switch is THE old person console, it's MADE for people who like Atari-Aged stuff. Here are some of my favorites: Horizon Chase Nintendo Entertainment System Super Nintendo Entertainment System Tetris 99 (this, NES, and SNES are included with the $20/year Nintendo Online) N++ Atari Flashback Classics (everything from Atari Vault is included, and more) Arcade Archives like Donkey Kong, Moon Patrol, Punch-Out, Time Pilot, a lot of Neo Geo games SEGA AGES games like Virtua Racing, Outrun, Phantasy Star Sega Genesis Collection DOOM, DOOM II, Doom 3, modern DOOM and Wolfenstein too Crash Bandicoot collection Konami, Capcom, SNK collections Too many indies to list Don't limit yourself to the physical cartridges in the store. While stuff like Mario Odyssey and Zelda Breath of the Wild are great, they're not the only game in town. Most of the short-attention-span stuff I truly love is only available as digital downloads. They're better about letting you move your stuff between systems now, as the software is tied to an account, not a single piece of hardware. https://www.nintendo.com/games/switch/ It's really great. Quite possibly my favorite "traditional" console yet. If you look at all these reviews and don't see something you want to play, you probably don't like games. Basically, it's everything the Atari VCS isn't.
    6 points
  18. This is going to be a big hit at the show, for sure. I can't wait to see pictures of people enjoying it! Thanks for representing the 7800 and 7800basic so well Matt, and my thanks to all of the contributors too!
    5 points
  19. Another relatively slow week around here as I continue to be preoccupied with annoying real life crud and haven't had much time for gaming, but I did manage to get in some Doom II playtime and the misses started a game of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon on the Switch. Ineligible Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Nintendo Switch) - 70 minutes Nintendo Game Boy Revenge of the Gator - 31 minutes PC-DOS Doom II (played on Nintendo Switch) - 435 minutes Total Video Game Play Time This Week 536 minutes (8 hours 56 minutes) [466 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week PC-DOS: 435 minutes Nintendo Switch: 70 minutes Nintendo Game Boy: 31 minutes
    5 points
  20. Since the topic has become wildfire, it could just as easily be that someone not under NDA and not knowing the real 'facts' somehow spread speculations that are indeed factual tidbits and the reaction from Atari only seems to confirm it as such, though no specifics were given. That could mean literally anything. It's none other than Atari's fault in the end for giving the bare minimum in regards to updates and leaving everyone else to guess wtaf is going on. How is it not their duty to communicate any major setbacks? I would think something like that would be covered in the IG terms and bind them into a mandated statement or update regarding the fact of such a thing. Everything else seems to quickly point to "we can't be held liable, etc. etc. etc." instead.
    5 points
  21. Stop the presses, I have some Classic time squeezed in. Arcade: Dig Dug -- 124 minutes Pac Man -- 38 minutes Galaga -- 21 minutes Galaga 88 -- 15 minutes Rolling Thunder -- 12 minutes Arcade classics this weekend! Surprising no one based on my username, I absolutely love Dig Dug. I spent a good bit of time reacquainting myself with the game and blowing through a few levels. Not quite where I'd like to be scorewise, yet, but getting there. Rolling Thunder is the 'dark horse' of the group this past weekend- maybe I'll spend some more time on it this week. C64: Lode Runner -- 67 minutes My inlaws gifted me an SNES-style controller for my C64 Mini- other than a kind of mushy D-Pad, it works great for my C64 right out of the box! I got some Lode Runner time in at work to 'test it out'. I never get sick of this game- even playing the same 15-20 levels over and over. I could use level skip, but I kind of like just running through the stages by muscle memory- it's comforting. I have to do some work in my office that's the 'hurry up and wait' kind with deploying AV clients, so I anticipate more C64 time this week, too.
    5 points
  22. I think a lot of people liked the original case design. I'm not so sure how they felt about the updated, thicker version. But perhaps by that time the project was too tainted. A modern take on the joystick was interesting. My opinion is they should've only stuck with getting that right, then down the road offer a console.
    5 points
  23. For me it did, but I had to realize the errors of my ways o u o
    5 points
  24. Original Xbox The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction - 145 min Burnout 3 takedown 100 min Halo Combat Evolved 40 min
    5 points
  25. Atari 2600 H.E.R.O 45 min Galagon Demo 30 min Boulder Dash Demo 30 min Mario Bros 30 min Princess Rescue 30 min Blinky goes Up 20 min Fall Down 20 min
    5 points
  26. WalMart: Stop running out of CoffeeMate (The big one)! Rednecks: Enough with the Skoal! Taco Bell: For the love of God Bring back Nacho Fries already! Internet: "Would Of" doesn't mean anything. Buick Le Sabre Customs: You're not Custom! You're just a car. (You too Les Paul "Customs", You're just a guitar, an expensive guitar.) Yahoo: Just knock it off. ataribox: You'll never be a VCS! And it feels like the Devil is trying to blow out the pilot light to my soul every time one of your goofy backers misuses the name.
    5 points
  27. ATARI 2600: Front Line (for HSC) - 22 minutes Missile Command - 27 minutes Squish 'Em - 10 minutes ATARI 7800: Pac-Man Collection - 43 minutes Planet Smashers (for HSC) - 62 minutes
    5 points
  28. Here are my times for this past week (Oktober 7th through 13th) on classic systems... oops, seems like I actually didn't play anything this week, be it classic or modern. Rather I played around with visualizations of demand for shared e-scooters in different parts of Vienna, taken from position data from a company which has its API pretty much out in the open... looks like this (actually this picture is combined from the data of one company with the business area of another...):
    5 points
  29. It took a long time, but here it is finally. Ever since I found it in the archive this summer I've been trying to find a way to get this ROM available. After many failed attempts we finally have it!! Special thanks to Thomas Jentzsch for all of his help in getting this done. This works in the latest version of Stella which should be available soon after you read this. After many years I can say it's about time this cat was let out of the bag!! Pursuit of the Pink Panther.bin
    4 points
  30. I think Indiegogo should just delete the TOS page. It's wasting server space, and it's not like they enforce it anyway. xD
    4 points
  31. The beauty of not showing the image in the updates means somebody can post any image they want and no one would know.
    4 points
  32. I'm fairly idle at the moment. Kind of waiting on things to happen... here and there. So, I thought I'd have a go at another title screen.... because.... why not
    4 points
  33. Went to an Amish country store this weekend, you would not believe the deals. A big bundle of string cheese with about 50 sticks for $5. Its pretty far out in the sticks but worth the trip
    4 points
  34. I think that would have landed like the Henry Ford quote (paraphrased) " -- if I asked my customers what they wanted, they'd say "a faster horse." Nobody outside the VCS group knows how effective or durable the sexy stick really is. It seems floppy and fragile to me, especially the spinning aspect. Maybe it's great and worth $50 but my confidence is low.
    4 points
  35. Meh, The CX40ish joystick looked kinda mediocre.
    4 points
  36. Times for the week all Atari 2600 breakout 23 mins eggomania 23 mins frontline 20 mins kaboom 11 mins gi joe cobra 2 mins solar Fox 114 mins All fun.
    4 points
  37. For this week... SNES Dragon Quest V - 160 min (Getting close to the end of this one, I think. Broke down and looked at a walkthrough, because I didn't want to miss anything important this close to the end. The walkthrough suggested this point in the game (the point I was currently at by coincidence) to go around and do some other things. Not sure if it's all required to finish the game or not, but I decided to do them. One of them was a long boss fight with some demon covered in mustard. At least that was what he looked like. But anyway, close to the end, I think. Possibly the next couple of weeks or so since I'm only playing it one day a week...) TurboGrafx-CD Cosmic Fantasy 2 - 72 min (Finished this one up. The evil Galam is dead! Unfortunately, so is my beautiful Laura. But Van, the main hero, is going to become a member of the Cosmic Force or whatever and roam the universe righting wrongs or whatever. Final verdict, the game is about a 5 or 6 out of ten. The main thing that drags it down is the battles. They are just too repetitive and un-interesting. The enemies never do anything other than basic attacks from what I can tell. It's almost like they didn't finish the game. For example, you can get items that cure poison and paralysis, so you'd think that there would be some enemies that would poison or paralyze you. Nope, never. Just basic hitting you for damage. Pros: Walking speed in towns and dungeons, cut scenes, music. Cons: Battles, battle sound effects, story is kinda generic.) TurboGrafx-16 Bonk's Adventure - 75 min (Played this through to the end. No continues again. First time I've done it in emulation. I've only beaten it on real hardware before. It's a little harder, partially because of the controller (I'm using a PS2 controller) and partially because of (I believe) lag from emulation. Anyway, I beat this the same night I finished up Cosmic Fantasy 2, so it was fun to beat two games on stream in one night.) The Legendary Axe - 20 min (I knew I wasn't going to finish this and was just playing around after CF2 and Bonk. It's a great game, but also suffers during emulation from input lag. Makes it a bit more difficult to time stuff than normally... I wonder if I had never played it on real hardware, if I would have as much trouble with emulation. I mean, if I was used to that input lag, my timing would be different than it is, and it might be easier. The world will never know...) Genesis Phantasy Star II - 300 min (More progress. Grinded a good bit for the upcoming dungeons and went through a couple of them with no problem. Then hit a third one and almost died. Gotta go grind some more, I guess. But I also found out that I'm going to have to go back for some items I skipped, thinking I didn't need them. Peeked at a walkthrough and it looks like they're going to be necessary. Oh well. But I am pretty close to the end. Will probably be able to beat this next stream. We'll see.)
    4 points
  38. My time for the week: GameCube: Gauntlet: Dark Legacy - 118 min. Finally beat the game on Hard.
    4 points
  39. I dare them to post this to Atari_VCS_Official and see how long Überstrategist's intern lets this one stay up for: Ditto this one: Clearly these posts are indicative of a crowdfunding campaign that's just teeming with satisified pigeons backers.
    4 points
  40. Yay! Page 888, tripple Retro... Since I will be celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving, I am very grateful for this bounty of fail, after the Coleco Chameleon debacle came to an end I was getting a funny feeling inside of me, sort of like when the internet goes down. I guess this is what smokers feel when trying to quit. I don't know I dont smoke, but now that the dirty laundry is being aired and history is repeating itself, my cravings for a scandal have subsided. If this is a scam & Fred Cheesehead dissapears, then perhaps people will learn a lesson. If it does come out, no doubt people will appalled to learn that they have to pay $10 a month ($8 yearly subscription) to play Money On The Run & other such tripple A titles, even though they can probably be played in your browser, downloaded in a Femtosecond But I do wish something to be shipped, at least it will be a "collectable" like the NEW Action52 cart or Caltron6-1 cart
    4 points
  41. 4 points
  42. Obvious observations are obvious: 1. Youtube is silly. Does the market really need all these gamer doodz reading out highlights from Kieren McCarthy's article about Atari VCS? 2. It's funny that all "Atari" has to say in response to everyone saying their thing is "doomed, in jeopardy, in trouble, dead!" is "Please stop watching and reading all the false and misleading narratives." HA-ha!
    4 points
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