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Indirectly. As much as he's a cunt, there is fact behind his abhorrent nature and behavior. There's just so much involved when you start to try and do things at a larger scale, the more you look, the more you see. It gets to a point you just think "fuck it". It's not something I can tackle by myself. And to be quite honest, when you find people like that out there trying to actively fuck you over, you wonder why the hell you bother. As I have mentioned, as much as everyone seems to think it's a license to print money selling "super expensive" hardware, I earnt more a decade ago than I do now doing this. I've largely been doing this because I enjoy doing it and I needed a more flexible and relaxed way of life due to chronic illness over the last few years, and its nice being part of a community and contributing to what you enjoy. When you encounter people like cunt-face over there, it makes you wonder why you bother. I'm in a situation I can return to earning more and doing less and with considerably less stress via other means at the moment, so hence I'm looking at ways of both increasing production / availability and reducing the load on myself.

I'd just like to clarify this is NOT the end of anything I've done, it's just time to regroup and reconsider how to actually handle this. I'm basically trying to juggle design, development, sales, support, manufacture, packaging, shipping, and much more besides. It's just not possible by myself, and regardless of what people seem to think, it's not some amazing money making scheme. Relatively I get FAR more money from the little contracting work I also do, and that is FAR less work and stress. The bit I am good at is design and development of new devices. I want to be able to concentrate my time in that area and not physically making and shipping. I will sort something out, but I need a break... !

All these fine Amico observations, arguments, pontifications and more.....Available now at the Amico Thread right up there...

Do I dare risk the lone remaining social media outlet they haven't banned me from?

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/emulation_2x.png

He gets on everybodys eventually...

I think this is a more apporiate graph...

How about we just skip ahead to Christmas?

You just need to keep reminding yourself for every dirtbag, there are 100 more people who appreciate your efforts. Unfortunately, the dirtbags usually make more noise and get heard most. The masses support you, so forget the few negative assholes!

SainT, I'm also willing to help, as I've done a couple projects with custom PCBs and surface mount parts. Feel free to send me a PM or email if you'd like to chat further.

Hopefully by the end of next week. ..Al

Yes. It's just too much work to handle by myself. I've been trying to figure out how I can scale things up for a while, and I've decided I just cant do it by myself. So for the moment I've had enough, it's just too much hassle for not a lot of money. Up until now I've been doing this because I enjoy it. I now no longer enjoy it. I'm going to see if I can get someone else on-board to take over the hardware side of things, then hopefully I can get back to the designing and making, which I do enjoy.

The Wii proved 13 years ago that casual/non-gamers will absolutely purchase a home console if it is priced correctly and is easy to play and understand.... AND... they can play with friends. Just because "mobile" is the preferred casual platform now doesn't mean those same folks won't purchase another home console. The biggest difference and the thing most people may overlook is that the Wii was a family & friends experience (to the non-gamers and casuals who purchased one). Mobile is NOT that. Mobile/casual games are nothing more than solitary experiences these days. One screen... and your face buried in it. Aside from Jackbox (which is NOT a family friendly game) there are very little couch co-op experiences on mobile. There is not a simple system that exists on the market that is affordable and focuses on playing with friends. People can try to argue that the Switch is that... but it's not... and the numbers worldwide prove it. There is a reason why board game revenue has gone up over 40% each year for the past 5 years! And it surpassed "video games" as the number one category on Kickstarter. Because those type of family/friends experiences don't exist in mobile or home consoles anymore. How much would it cost "middle America" or someone in India or China to play a 4 player couch co-op game on the Switch? You are correct that a very large number of Wii buyers never purchased a game for it. But its not the machines fault that Nintendo didn't focus on casuals. They admit that casuals were not their market. As soon as the Wii came out and exploded... they pretty much went right back to their wheelhouse. Smash Bros, Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Pikman, Metroid Prime (a game I worked on with Miyamoto for 5 years). That's why it took Nintendo so long to even look and focus on mobile. It's not where their revenue is generated. They know their hardcore fanbase better than any other hardware company out there. Millennials who grew up on the NES/SNES and Pokemon. It is very well documented that folks at Nintendo US and Nintendo Europe were screaming at Nintendo Japan to please make and push more "casual" games on the Wii. Bowling, Shuffleboard, Card/dice/board games, word games, etc. Nintendo created the Wii because they were getting their asses kicked by Sony & Microsoft and needed to pivot. They didn't create it because they were trying to capture a casual audience. That was a happy surprise which they readily admit in many interviews. But they left a lot of "money on the table" in doing so. But again... they don't need casuals to survive. They are a massive powerhouse without casual... and they know it. $40 billion company... they know what they're doing when it comes to their audience. 3rd party publishers really dropped the ball on Wii. Again... not the platforms fault that most of the 3rd party stuff was absolute shovelware. The reality was that all the big publishers had their "A" teams and "B" teams creating content for the PS & XBOX. Wii was an afterthought as everyone thought it was going to tank... and even when it didn't... the "A" teams weren't interested in making casual games. No sense in taking a team of 300 who just came off the lastest Call of Duty to put them on a Shuffleboard game for the Wii (although how awesome would THAT have been!) Haha! In closing... I think that just because no one has made a casual platform in 13 years doesn't mean that people don't want it. It means no one has done it. Wii U was NOT that system. Nintendo constantly brags (and should be commended) for never wanting to look back or do the same thing twice. We believe we will bring back casuals, non-gamers AND hardcores to play in a room together again.... as the only real casual games that exist over the past decade are solitary experiences. Time will tell. Give me a year.

I can't help but think that a lot of the middle 8-bit ports forgot a central lesson learned during the early days of video game development: your eye follows your player, therefore it makes sense to expend every effort to make the player look as detailed as possible, because you're only peripherally looking at the playfield. -Thom

You should to try spending 3 years developing a product, sometimes spending 12 hours a day working on it. Seriously though, everything I have made WILL continue, I just need to figure out how. This is not giving up, it's getting support.

SainT > Having been involved in similar situations, I can certainly empathize. Taking care of your health is the first priority. Could you tell us which parts you are looking to outsource to someone else? (i.e. manufacturing, handling payments, shipping, etc.) While I can't handle the whole thing myself (I own an electronics service company, but it focuses on design, not mass manufacturing), I can act as a technical advisor to someone else, and sign an NDA if you wish. In particular, try contacting Albert, who handles the AtariAge store.

A fairly substantial week for gaming around here this past week, with a couple seasonally appropriate games and a few multiplayer titles as well since I had a friend come over and did some gaming with them one night. Ineligible Alien Trilogy (Sony PlayStation) - 172 minutes Bram Stoker's Dracula (Sega Genesis) - 170 minutes Doom II (PC-DOS, played on Nintendo Switch) - 100 minutes Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude! (Sega Genesis) - 5 minutes Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition (Sega Genesis) - 83 minutes Streets of Rage (Sega Genesis) - 95 minutes Nintendo Switch Puyo Puyo Tetris - 40 minutes Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 85 minutes The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - 165 minutes Total Video Game Play Time This Week 915 minutes (15 hours 15 minutes) [290 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Sega Genesis: 353 minutes Nintendo Switch: 290 minutes Sony PlayStation: 172 minutes PC-DOS: 100 minutes

A fairly substantial week for gaming around here this past week, with a couple seasonally appropriate games and a few multiplayer titles as well since I had a friend come over and did some gaming with them one night. Ineligible Puyo Puyo Tetris (Nintendo Switch) - 40 minutes Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo Switch) - 85 minutes The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Nintendo Switch) - 165 minutes PC-DOS Doom II (Played on Nintendo Switch) - 100 minutes Sega Genesis Bram Stoker's Dracula - 170 minutes Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude! - 5 minutes Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition - 83 minutes Streets of Rage - 95 minutes Sony PlayStation Alien Trilogy - 172 minutes Total Video Game Play Time This Week 915 minutes (15 hours 15 minutes) [625 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Sega Genesis: 353 minutes Nintendo Switch: 290 minutes Sony PlayStation: 172 minutes PC-DOS: 100 minutes

I absolutely love this game. I think I mentioned to Bob at the show that this was one of my long-term "dream" projects for the 5200. I was beaten to it, and I think I'd be hard pressed to do a better job than this. I think I've already put more time into this game than any other homebrew game I've purchased, excluding my own, of course. This is good stuff.

My Speakerhat Fave

I see there is no point. Congratulations, you've made my ignore list.

One thing occurred to me as a possibility: Parse the input line, convert to XB tokens and use them to create a new XB line. For example 10 INPUT FUNCTION$ 20 code to parse and tokenize the line and plug the tokens into line 100 ! need more than 1 line for this 30 RUN 40 40 rem actual start of the program 100 REM XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX After conversion, line 100 becomes y=cos(3*X)+3*x^2 and the XB program then knows what to do with it.

Thanks, I had already modified the keyboard code to change the keys for Continue and Demo, so it was easiest for me to hook into that. I haven't changed the keys on the 5200 but hopefully I can do something similar there. Pressing J on the title screen will step through: JOYSTICK = Atari joystick GENESIS = Genesis controller, C will jump but up won't MIX = will work with either controller, up will jump as will C on a Genesis controller really this is the Genesis controller again, but both C and up will jump The settings apply to both ports during a two player game. This also includes tjlazers text layout and a minor bug fix where the stack was filling up. Moon Patrol redux (revision3).xex

Heck yeah! For sure. Every game has a single player and couch co-op mode. Required for every game we're doing. It's been a lot of fun updating and turning traditional single player games into couch co-op as well. Considering this is the Atari thread... our 8 player Missile Command is really fun! You can play in Versus or Co-Op. And we even have a 2 player mode where someone is on the top and someone on the bottom and your firing rockets at each other while defending your own. But of course... a full single player mode as well.

I admire your enthusiasm! I just hope you also have a good solo experience planned. I don't care too much about friends and family...When playing video games I mean, of course.

PC Divinity: Original Sin 2 (607 min) Man, I'm chomping at the bit to start up Outer Worlds, but I'm getting close to the end of DOS2, so I'm going to do that first. I expect I'll have times for both those games next week.

Wow... those are so obscure I had to Google them both. Just like people will have to do for the Ataribox. And Fred. Both someday relegated to the trash heap of forgotten videogame failures. On the plus side, some of the Wikipedia entry on the Net Jet can easily be repurposed for the Ataribox though: The host computer for the Ataribox being the one in the shoebox, of course. The R-Zone entry is likewise applicable: Everything old is new again!

Halloween - 62,775 Small improvement!

The first time i managed to exit the hangar in Raid Over Moscow!!!?

Here are some assembled copies ready to take to RetroGameCon, and the contents.

Congrats! Now I have my first request... I dropped my ABBUC membership this year because there is little to nothing in English anymore. At one time, the monthly mags were translated to English and we were able to download the translations. I understand that ABBUC lost the resource for translations, but perhaps you could look into getting this going again? Google translations just won't cut it for the typical English-speaker, and even with my 3 years of high school German (50+ years ago), it just doesn't work well. I'm sure it is a drudge to translate stuff, but have you considered paying someone? I'd certainly pay extra on the membership to get stuff that I could understand. "An English Surcharge" Anyhow, food for thought. Thanks, Larry

SainT - do it in your own time when it makes sense. We’d all prefer sooner than later but your hard work is already much appreciated. I’ve been playing my Lynx a ton lately. I’ll wait as long as it takes!

Oh bless you SainT, such wonderful work has been done. There'll be help out there I'm sure. Please don't abandon everything! There'll be a solution that allows you to rest while others step in under your control.

Updated lists of online manuals. To encourage newer better manuals I have omitted some of the older low res or smudgy manuals. First is an alphabetic list of manuals online from all sources, the list is in pdf format, it lacks the specific URLs and only tells you where to look for each manual. Always eager to hear of new web sources. (Where I spot them I am omitting documents just copied from The Cyc which is a commercial offering). About 400 titles with some duplicates. softwaremanualsamalgOct19.pdf Second is a text format listing of all the manuals to be found on Atariage, with full URL references to help you get to them. Something like 213 titles. omegalist.txt

You might be slightly more considerate here - it's still a hobby project. Instead, try to offer some help.

Yes it's the GTIA. I swapped it temporarily with a PAL GTIA and the issue isn't there, of course the colours are a little off with that one in there. Time to order a replacement. Thanks to all suggestions.

problem with casual / mobile is you are never going to sell them a system, ask nintendo, they happened to do it once over a decade ago grampa got to golf timmy got monkey ball, it was a huge success for a couple years everyone moved on and nintendo made 2 tablets of varying success ( switch being up for debate) keeping in mind consoles sold != console success how many whee's got bought, a fuckton, how many games were sold past wee sports in comparison to its big boy pants competition? and left in a junk drawer at grandma's house along with her 720p plasma that no one cared about 1 year after it became cheap

has anyone contacted Mitsubishi Asic Division (MELA) to see if they still have net lists for the Geneve GateArray? (and, if so, who would they release them to?). As I recall, it was the first ASIC they ever did for a US based customer. At the time we did the project, their US based office was in Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina. Also, as for the PAL -- to the best of my recollection it had two main purposes: (1) to correct a timing glitch in the GateArray, (2) to provide current buffering between the CMOS gate array and some of the other Schottkey chip inputs, and (3) to correct whatever other glitches we found in the overall logic during original integration testing. I will not have direct access to my older personal archives until sometime around new years.

I usually yank cartridges out and if the computer goes all "YAAAAH!!!" on me I just turn it off and on again.

I caught the ZPH episode on this. I was thinking it would be more intense gameplay if there's an alarm claxon after the money is taken. I used to play Splinter Cell years ago and that would happen when you got spotted.

I was just browsing eBay for a pair of paddles for my 2600, because I was dying to play some Warlords. But then I saw this photo: Eagle-eyed Atari aficionados will recognize the dual controller holder for the 5200, scandalously abused with a pair of 2600 paddles. So now I have a dual controller holder for my 5200 ?

More 7800 Baby Pac Fandom...

Tripletopper says he bets real money against people in these games. Maybe he needs to buck up here and start paying for advice. Or even for reading through. ?

I can't wait to see the AtariVCS / Peanuts Thanksgiving memes!

For BAHA Software, I can say that winning the 4th place was the best way to conclude our beloved TRAIN series. Now you can download the game from our website. And yes, there is a dual-track tape version too. We would like to thank ABBUC for organizing the contest and wish good luck for the future years.

Xbox One The Outer Worlds: 202 minutes

Congratulations to everyone, and I encourage everyone to put something together for next year and keep this alive. Obviously I was disappointed to come last but my original intention was just to get something in to support the contest, the final version of Block on Legs is a much more playable than the abbuc one - I just ran out of time. I'm forcing myself to keep playing and tweaking the levels to make them a bit easier but as there are now 20 it's a bit of a pain in the butt. Hope to release the game soon!

PS3 God of War: Chains of Olympus 209 XCOM: Enemy Within 294 X360 XCOM: Enemy Unknown 697 All modern gaming for me this week. I finished both Chains of Olympus and Enemy Unknown. I didn't realize that Enemy Within is actually just a bunch of DLC for Enemy Unknown, or I probably would have started with it. Oh well - there is so much extra content that it almost feels like a true sequel. I also turned up the difficulty and it was MUCH harder.

Halloween-75,600 First real attempt-tried again, didn't go as well. I'll probably hope/push for 100k sometime this week, but that's about it-it's actually not a terrible game, just takes too long to build a big score.