Dauber

Something occurred to me on Monday -- it's a GAMING convention in the MIDWEST....yet there's never a euchre tournament?! I'm seriously considering looking into putting something together. I'm no euchre expert, but I love the game.

I had a great time, despite my usual social awkwardness! I started AND ended Saturday by learning new games: first thing I did at MGC was learn to play chess (I'm gonna be 50 this year and most people I know learned at an early age so I figured I'd better hurry up!), and last thing on Saturday I was indoctrinated into Werewolf courtesy of Guys, Games & Beer - whose room this year was INSANELY huge! (Seriously, I think when I first went to MGC in 2006 you could have fit the whole show in a room the size that GGB had!)

Episode 145 is here! Yeah, yeah, we know. "NEW EPISODE SO SOON?!?" Due to the logistical nightmare we all call life, our originally scheduled topic had to be postponed, so instead, after realizing we haven't done an off-topic episode in a while, maybe we should change our pace for a bit, and here we are. Thank you all for hanging in there with us! https://piefactorypodcast.wordpress.com/2024/04/05/episode-145-our-top-ten-console-games/

At this point, I just hope I get to see downtown Milwaukee with a clear sky -- that's never happened to me!

I saw that last year's was still pinned but no mention of this year's! Same place as the last few -- Baird Center, formerly Wisconsin Center, Milwaukee. I have my Amtrak trip booked (I've found that it's much easier than driving there and the same amount of time), hotel booked, ride to the train station scheduled -- holy cow, they have a dinky-ass intermodal station there; quite a difference from Union Station in Chicago! For me, it's not just a chance to nerd out, but also time for me to just be on my own for a couple of days. I'm thinking of spending a few hours away from the show and seeing what else there is in other parts of Milwaukee; I've only ever really been downtown and the lakefront, and downtown Milwaukee is ****DEAD**** on the weekends! Maybe check out a record store or two, I dunno. It feels a bit weird going to these given that I'm not really on the market for a lot of home video gaming stuff; I use multicarts rather than individual cartridges whenever possible, Edladdin has my controller needs fulfilled, etc. Might grab some Vectrex overlays from Sean Kelly, and I'm hoping to join Guys, Games & Beer for their annual game of Werewolf... I don't know if they've announced celebrity guests yet, though.

Hmmm...wonder what the chances are of them releasing a fixed version of Impossible Mission. I imagine some licenses would need to be acquired though.

Pie Factory Podcast is back with episode 144! Today we discuss the ins and outs of opposing prepositions, while our listeners enjoy complex sentences and the deep meanings of racing with superheroes. Enjoy, dear friends, for this will likely be the last ever episode of January 2024. https://piefactorypodcast.wordpress.com/2024/01/30/episode-144-buggy-boy-and-x-men/

I doubt that AtariAge -- which is now a property of Atari -- would make custom carts with the Popeye ROM given that 1) it's a Nintendo game (you'll notice that homebrews based on Atari-owned titles are still available), and 2) there'd probably be some licensing issues with the Popeye characters. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if homebrew developers sought out alternate ways of getting carts made. AtariAge was not the only way to get homebrews pressed to cartridge.

There are exactly two things that everybody likes: podcasts and video games. Nothing else. And boy, do we have some good news for you: for the first time ever, Jim and Sean have put the two together! Your 2023 will certainly go out on a high note as the two trade barbs over two arcade compilations. Who will win? What will their ultimate settlement be? The world may never know. But listen to episode 143 for at least some clues. https://piefactorypodcast.wordpress.com/2023/12/27/episode-143-namco-classic-collection/

We here at Pie Factory Podcast do not do turkey drops; we do EPISODE drops. And today we're dropping episode 142! There's more to do in the world than just eat (although, listening to this episode, you'd never know that). We also like to play video games from time to time. So join us! https://piefactorypodcast.wordpress.com/2023/11/20/episode-142-join-em-and-phozon/

*ribbit*

EDIT: sale pending I have two Atari 7800 Mateos carts -- one with POKEY, one without -- and one Vectrex cart, plus the burner. I'm selling these because I literally never ever use them. (Since I got a Dragonfly and a Concerto, I've not needed to use 'em.) I have NEVER used the Vectrex cart, so I can't say for sure that it works, but the 7800 versions do. Long story short, you "burn" ROMs to the cart via the enclosed burner, and you need to use a mini-USB cable to do so. You just drag-and-drop from your OS desktop*. Don't know about the Vectrex ROMs, but the 7800 ROMs have to be the .BIN format, not the .A78 format. I'm asking $35 for all three carts plus the burner, including shipping, US only. Caveats: - Again, I don't know if the Vectrex cart works. - Juan Mateos has seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth, so there's not much official support aside from the archived version of his site, currently reachable via https://web.archive.org/web/20221205013128/http://www.vectrex.hackermesh.org/index.php/en/ - The reason for the * is that lately it's been tricky with new OSes, including Windows and Mac, because they tend to want to put extra hidden garbage on USB devices, including the Mateos. So you might have to do a bit of trickery in copying the ROMs over so that other system files don't come with 'em; the Mateos is very picky in that it wants ONLY the ROM and nothing else. Picture enclosed.

Just in time for Portland Retro Gaming Expo (kinda), we present episode 141! This time, instead of the usual booing from people listening, the boos we here are from the spooky creatures that come herewith and thereto and therein with two creepy-themed games. Join us for our usual reviews, commentary, and side-splitting hair-raising banter! https://piefactorypodcast.wordpress.com/2023/10/14/ghosts-n-goblins-and-monster-bash/

Episode 53: Where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going Whatever happened to this podcast? Well, listen on and find out! Lotsa new homebrews out, so little time! http://homebrew78.fab4it.com/index.php?name=hbh_episode_053.mp3

FWIW, still the #1 rated morning news in the market.

My wife and I were watching WGN (Chicago) Morning News on the TiVo (it's a very unusual news program in that they get very silly and irreverent and aren't all stiff and formal like most news programs), and I saw the Atari 2600 E.T. graphic. I paused the TiVo and said to my wife, "If this is a story about how E.T. is the 'worst video game ever,' I'm gonna go ballistic." Unpause. I hear Mike Toomey say, "Now, here's a story about the worst video game ever." DAARAAAARHHHERHGHRHRHGRHGRHRGHGHHAHGHRGHHGRHGRRGHHHH!!!!! Some of the claims Toomey spread included: it was a poor seller it was so bad that retailers shipped so many back to Atari that they had to be buried in a dump It nearly tanked the video game industry I messaged him on Facebook on the off chance he 1) checks his FB messages and 2) will notice that a non-friend messaged him.

I knew about that -- but can you tilt it when in video game mode as opposed to pinball mode?

BTW, fun fact about Baby Pac-Man that I don't think I've seen mentioned before... At least year's Midwest Gaming Classic, I learned from watching nateo's wife play that you can actually trigger the tilt on Baby Pac-Man while playing the video game portion! The cab that was at MGC wasn't level and it was constantly rocking back and forth when moving the joystick!

Thanks, PM! Glad you liked what Scattered Frog whipped up for ya.

Rumor has it that episode 141 has been released. Well, we're here to completely dispel that rumor: it's actually episode 140 that's been released. But not even a party band outside of Pie Factory Podcast's south headquarters could prevent Jimmy G from bringing you all the important news about a couple of 40-something-year-old video games, with the somewhat undying help of his cohost Sean. It's all about dedication, friends. https://piefactorypodcast.wordpress.com/2023/09/06/episode-140-astro-invader-redux-and-astro-fighter/

Well, if it's true that multicarts won't work, they lost my sale. I thinned out my cartridge collection so I could use a Harmony, Dragonfly, etc., mainly because I do not have room for all those carts.

Aww, thanks, PM!

Episode 139: Shootin' the breeze and burning our throats Summer schedules can be a beast. And believe me, we have tried to alter that beast, but we find ourselves standing in the shadows of that beast. It's been a while, so we figured we'd better get y'all up to speed as to how our lives have been going, what we've been playing, and why we are who we are. https://piefactorypodcast.wordpress.com/2023/08/09/episode-139-shootin-the-breeze-and-burning-our-throats/

Hey there, friends...Sean here. Something I've been thinking a lot about lately...I'm really thinking of doing one more, maybe two more episodes and then ending the podcast. A lot of things have factored into this: - As it is now, I'm averaging, what? An episode a year?? When I started this podcast, I was doing it biweekly, then monthly, and then...I don't know...life? - I really want to free myself up for other projects, at least one of which has been in the making for over ten years. - Zero Page Homebrew really does a much better job at this stuff than I ever can, so I figure...why not let the true experts take care of it? - I just can't keep up with the pace of the homebrew world right now. There have been a slew of new ones either out or announced since my most recent episode (November 2022!!). And some of those games have been in genres that I just cannot get into, so there's no way I'd be able to do them justice. - On a technical side...when I started this podcast, I was still kind of new-ish to podcasting, and so I used a quick-and-easy podcasting plugin with my web hosting provider. Sadly, that plugin is extremely out of date and literally does not work with the version of PHP that I use with that service -- for my most recent episode, I literally had to downgrade my version of PHP (meaning any web sites I hosted crashed) to upload the newest episode to the feed, then go back and re-upgrade the PHP version. I could re-work this but it would almost certainly require setting up a new RSS feed and getting people to switch over to that one, which...isn't really worth the hassle. - And just plain...lack of interest, to be quite honest. I'm still playing the games; I just haven't had the interest or attention span to do the necessary research. And when I do said research, I need to script it out in a podcastable format, find the time to record, and much more difficult: find the time to post-produce. There just aren't enough hours in a day, and most unfortunately, there is only one of me. (If I could have, like, five instances of me, I wouldn't be posting this message!) I'll keep y'all abreast of what's going on as things happen, but at least as of now, this is where my head is at. Huge thank you to everybody who have been listening, and of course a huge thank you goes out to No Swear Gamer, who got it all started in the first place.

I'm busy but fine! As for those who are interested in the best arcade podcast, I feel bad for them because there hasn't been an episode of No Quarter for years.