donssword

This is one of my favorite hacks :-) I grabbed the ROM a few years back when you released it and it was in heavy rotation with my teens and I for a while. This ROM runs quite well on Wii 2600.

I loathe Laser Quest. It sounds great in theory, and it turns out to be a hollow, incomplete concept, poorly executed. My biggest Activision disappointment.

Thanks!

Has a ROM been released for Thomas Jentzsch's THREE•S yet? https://www.atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1042

Fishing Derby by Activision. I second Frogs & Flies, just don't forget to toggle the difficulty switch. And I'm saying Combat, just because it really is that good.

Can't wait to hear more. I wish the Atari brand license holder was more co-operative. Is it okay for me to say "I'm not surprised?"

No, not factory refurbs. About half-way through their lifecyle, they upgraded their branding to look "cooler"--I think this is about the time they started to do more print advertising. My belief is that they still had a lot of warehouse stock, and just went thru and relabled them to match the new branding. The old branding featured screenshots ala Activision, but their new branding featured the sexier artwork and the blue Xonox brand color and style to look more distinct from their competitors. I have a Chuck Norris Super Kicks/Artillery Duel with the old Kung Fu Super Kicks label underneath--I bought it in a Chuck Norris box (sadly long gone). This is why I don't believe that Xonox changed the name after their Chuck Norris license expired--rather they upgraded Kung Fu superkicks to Chuck Norris. This is further supported by the fact that King Fu labels are an old-school Activision style with a fake screenshot vs. the more slicky produced Chuck Norris labels.

He's in deep L4D2 now. So much so, that I migrated his Steam Family save to a copy of his own since its on sale for $4.99 right now, and everytime I wanted to get into Steam, he was already playing. He hasn't started running around the neighborhood with weapons screaming about zombies (yet), so I think it all turned out okay Thanks for the input/feedback everyone.

Totally check out Basic Fantasy. The rule book is available as a free PDF, and you can buy the paperback at Amazon (createspace which is Amazon) for a little over $4.00. Yes, I said $4.00. Grab the PDF here: http://www.basicfantasy.org/ ... and then grab the paperback here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1482355124/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&tag=atariage&creativeASIN=1482355124&linkCode=as2 What makes Basic Fantasy great, is that it brings D&D B/X up to D20. What sold me was that my kids could play in the old school way, while playing D20, so they could transfer those play styles to other old school games, or to D20 derivatives like Pathfinder, and still feel comfortable. At the BFRPG site, they have modules and rule addendums (new classes and races), and an active community.

Good answers. I'm leaning towards "yes" at this point. While my kids are not fans of TV or film horror, they are very game savvy. We homeschool, for no particular reason--not for religious reasons, mostly because we live in the city and my kids are dyslexic. He plays D&D (Basic Fantasy RPG, which is an OSR-like based on the D20 SRD). They have seen all the Matrix films recently, minus the sex scene, I "may" show them the orig version of Blade Runner (less boobs, and less head crushing) this weekend as we recently read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep." We tend to monitor a lot of the content they are around, and we don't allow them to go see R-rated or horror films (excluding the recent viewing of the Matrix films).

Okay, so I'm in the Steam Family Sharing Beta. I really look forward to Family Sharing saving me some money because I got 3 Steam users in my house--me and my two teens. We have mostly Macs, and 1 Windows laptop. I'm drooling over the prospect of the upcoming Steam Machine (Steam Box for you oldseters). I buy all the Humble Bundle deals, and lots of Steam sale games, which has included a few Mature titles like Left 4 Dead, Telltales' The Walking Dead, Alan Wake, and Dead Space. I'm fine with my kids playing most FPS titles--we play Nexuiz, Xonotic, TimeSplitters 2 & 3, Goldeneye 007 Wii, Conduit 2 (the Wii is as modern as I have gotten). They have on occasion, though rarely, watched me play CoD Modern Warfare Reflex Ed on the Wii (a highly underated game, IMHO), as I usually do not play games in front of my kids, waiting until after bedtime. I would not allow them to play a Silent Hill game at this time, though I would consider the request from my soon to be 16 y.o. I also would avoid letting them play Dead Space, but I would allow the 16 y.o. to play Dead Space Extraction co-op (overall presentation, story, content detail). I would not allow them to play or watch House of the Dead Overkill (though I played a lot of it myself). Getting to my real question: My 13 y.o. is a heavy gamer. Lots of Minecraft, WoW, Planetside, TF2. He watches all the gamer videos, Pew Dee Pie (sp?), Yogscast, etc. A lot of those YouTube gamers cover Mature titles, incl games like GTA V (which I am not too happy about). In digging thru my Steam Library, my 13 y.o. saw Left 4 Dead, and has asked to play it. I spent some time playing it myself and found it fairly tame--just an FPS with bots running at you. The overall "hideousness" of it seemed sort of tame--rather the game relies more on inducing panic by throwing hoards of unpredictable enemies at you. At what age would you allow you own kids to play Left 4 Dead?

Lots of folks collect Activision patches, but does anyone collect Imagic patches? Imagic was supposed to have a patch/sticker/button reward program of some kind, and while I've read about them, I've never actually seen one. They didn't even have pics of them on the old Numb Thumb Club website (which is now sadly missing). Does anyone have one of these mystery items that they can share a picture of?

What about a Flashback? Add some real sticks (not the wireless ones that come with it, they are terrible), and some Genesis extension cords from ebay, and you'll be all set. No carts to lose, fair emulation (yeah, you can laugh that I said that), and no emotional attachment to your personal collection (that is key).

There is a video of the PR rep from XSeed showing off the game, and she is playing it without the plastic junk just fine. Yeam I have been hovering around think about getting this title for a while as well. I just spend too damn much on Wii games already,

I'm a huge fan of the PS1 kart racer "Looney Tunes Racing." They really went all out trying to make a competitor for Mario Kart racing and the developer's passion shows: Good kart racing physics A ton of kart based minigames Plenty of unlockables including new karts that were not just reskins Each track had its own distinct design and feel--each was based on a diff classic cartoon (Opera, Jack and the beanstalk, studio backlot, etc) I think it's plays far better than Looney Tunes Space Race which was promising, but it was waaay to easy to just fly your rocket off the track.

I hate to sound like a jerk about this, but who cares? Honestly, the community of people interested in these carts is tiny (sorry, just my opinion. I will only be paying for cd-w's version). There will be no confusion, and if there is, does it really matter? How many versions of Space Invaders, licensed and unlicensed have been barfed out over the years by aspiring programmers across a multitude of platforms? Solid Corp (sp?) claims to have hit paydirt and is in talks with the copyright holders. Who cares? Did he pay for a license? Has money changed hands? Is there a contract, and could it even be enforced? I seriously doubt any of this would hold up legally. It just makes my head and my heart hurt to hear people debating the legality of any of this, especially given how some of the folks in this have behaved (poorly), when people so passionately love doing these things for no gain (cd-w and associates). Wait. Wait. I have a name cd-w's version: Star Castle THE BEST!!! It needs three exclamation points because it really is THE BEST!!! version of Star Castle on the VCS.

"Racing is the Beam" by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost is awfully good. Its gets a little technical, explaining some details of the programming, but it gives the reader a pretty in-depth view of how some of the top (and most infamous) games were built back in the day. I think one of the most eye opening things it covers is how truly amazing Combat really was at the time. I am a big fan of Steve Kent's "The Ultimate History of Video Games" (orig pub as The First Quarter), but it requires more familiarity with specifc games already.

Both sides might be nice, but I wouldn't sweat it. After a few shots in the 1st game I played with my 11 y.o. son, it became natural to line up the shots to the proper side.

Wow. Just played Broadside. This is a really, really cool Combat mod. I would say possibly my fave version of Combat yet (other than classic).

Tomy UFO Attack and Bambino Master Blaster feature two different game styles. I still own my Bambino Master Blaster--loved it to death as a kid but don't play it enough now. BMB features alien "saucers" for enemies rather than Space Invader style critters. And rather than marching towards you Space Invaders style, the Bambino saucers fly down towards you, like a slower Mattel Battlestar Galactica Space Alert. Sometimes the saucers divide from 1 into 2, or slide off the side of the screen. I have to say that the claim that Bambino licensed this game from Tomy has to be false. The gameplay is different (side-to-side descent vs. vertical fall) and the VFDs are quite different. This YouTube video shows you the basics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgxR9xi4Q9I

Apps can be downloaded directly from the web and placed on your SD/SDHC card or USB drive in the Apps directory, or via the Homebrew Browser (which is the preferred way for most people, and the easiest). Most emulators will put separate ROM directories at your SD/SDHC or USB Drive root, and you can drop the ROMs in those directories. If you wish, you can create subdirectories as well. I divide my GB, GBC, and GBA ROMS into separate folders, because there are just too many of them. I have long been tempted to divide my 2600 ROMs by publisher. Custom builds for some emulators are not available on the Wii. For example, the latest version of Stella hasn't been ported, so you can't run the Star Castle Beta. Also, there are custom GBA builds that have not been ported (like the GBA one used for Pokemon Liquid Crystal). Make sure you run and update the latest emulators available thru the Homebrew Channel, as previous ones had a bug in the XML file requesting invalid network calls. I recommend using the legal Channel launchers whenever possible, as they bypass Homebrew Browser and launch more quickly and bypass the XML bug.

Great news. Who even knew it wasn't already perfect? I really like how the game "feels"--I think it is better than arcade perfect, as certain allowances need to be made to accomodate the VCS/Stella control scheme and rendering technologies. The modern additions like the soundtrack and intro screen really are above and beyond.

IMHO SDHC is cheaper, especially over the long term. No moving parts, no external power requirements, lower failure rate. And most people are not going to be running ISOs unless they are trying to emulate PS1 games or are pirating Wii games. Piracy = Bad.

1) Use LetterBomb to install HBC: http://please.hackmii.com/ 2) For LetterBomb and EMU games grab a fast SDHC card of about 16GB. Check WiiBrew.org for a list of compatible cards--if you don't get a compatible card, it won't work. HBC has almost all the installers you will need. To be clear, do the following things in order: 1) Buy the biggest fastest compatible SDHC card you can afford listed on WiiBrew.org. 2) Use LetterBomb to mod your Wii. 3) Install the HomeBrew Channel (HBC) on your Wii. 4) Install your emulators of choice, likley via HBC. 5) Copy your old school ROMs to your SDHC. 6) Do not pirate Wii games. If you like the Wii, and you like the games, buy them. When you pirate games from a current console/platform, you are telling Developers and Publishers you don't want them to make you new games.

Grabbed a powered USB hub that I am using on my Wii to expaand to 4 ports. Its powered by USB, so there are 2 cables that take up both USB slots on the Wii--1 for data and one for power--but provides 4 ports for use, and I don't need to use any power outlets. We run the Skylanders dongle, Wii Speak (not that it gets any use), the Logitech Keyboard, and a Logitech Microphone for singinig games that rarely gets swapped for a Headbanger Headset when I play Conduit 2--I prefer to go headset-less though, so I don't have to deal with the douche bags. Shipping is typically slow from DealExtreme (its from China), but it does what I needed and the price was right. If interested, here is a link: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/spider-style-usb-4-port-hub-49002