humppa

Bigger than life Pong/Breakout/Pac-Man/Tetris: Project Blinkenlights

I disagree. I even thought he was only joking.

For a rarity "8" cartridge, PAL Motorodeo's sell for rather mediocre prices. There isn't a huge demand for it. See this one for example. 8.90 EUR / $11.50 with only a single bid... Usually, rarity "8" cartidges sell for much more, even when the box is not included.

I'm not actually sure, I imagine PAL though as that's the system here in NZ. Ah, ok, then it will most likely be PAL. Actually, I would rate a PAL Motorodeo much lower than a rarity of "8", but that's just my opinion. The price you paid is still great though - and let's not forget that it's a nice game too!

I am using the AA "Rarity Guide" a lot, mainly for finding reviews and ratings of a certain cartridge. I find it somewhat annoying that the "External reviews" section is in most cases only populated for the NTSC-variants. Since most cartridges are available in both NTSC and PAL, why not link to those reviews also in the PAL-section? As an example, Motorodeo NTSC has 2 reviews and one "related link", but the much less scarce PAL-version has not a single link. Depending on how the database is structured, it should be fairly easy to link all reviews/links to all rarity entries with the same name.

NTSC or PAL? (I suspect the latter...)

Hmm, ok, so the reason why there have been many (US) auctions for a NTSC-Frostbite, but OTOH not a single one for a (European) PAL-Frostbite during the last months is just "bad luck" then?

I've been looking for a PAL version of Frostbite for quiet some time now. Haven't found any... On the other hand, there are many NTSC versions that turn up on Ebay. Is the PAL-version (original Activision) really that much more rare compared to the NTSC variant? Are the rarity ratings (3-4 for both) still appropriate?

So how much did you offer to him (after the auction ended)?

Nah, only because my order is still "Processing"?

Nope, it ends in January. The ending scene was simply brilliant to look at. First you see falling snowflakes on your screen, then the screen flickers and goes black for a few seconds and just when you think that the game has crashed, you see Albert shipping all the toys that you have previously painted.

Sounds exactly like the symptoms of my Z-Tack cartridge. Try cleaning the contacts with some rubber or a Q-tip soaked with alcohol. In my case, even resoldering didn't help. Good luck! Btw, did you get this cart from Australia/NZ? Does it say "Hin Seng" on the cartridge? Could you make a scan?

Yep, I saw that, they're even quiet cheap here in Germany (EUR 12,90). I just tested with my other joystick (a Sigma 1001 arcade joyboard) and in contrast to the Competition there wasn't any interference.

Any updates on the AA holdiday-sale? When will the international orders be shipped (I ordered on 29 December)? Thanks!

Thanks for the reply. It's at least good to know that I am not the only one with this strange interference. Your guess (joystick cable acting as RF antennas) doesn't sound too unrealistic. Otherwise I wouldn't know what else could cause the interference, since pressing the joystick into a direction means nothing more than to put the according direction-pin to ground/GND (Pin 8 ).

Sounds kinda weird, I know, but did anyone ever experience some interference on their television when using a Competition Pro with a 2600 Jr.? The Competition Pro is my favourite controller, but I always get these annoying flickery lines each time I am steering into a certain direction. Strangely, I don't get this interference at all when using the wobbly CX-24 (which admittedly rather sucks in "fast" games like Pacman Jr.).

Still processing here too...and still more than a week of shipping to Europe... Can't wait for Thrust+, Toyshop Trouble and some other gems to arrive.

I don't know anything about chips, but I wonder if you could put it on another board? Well, theoretically that's a "yes", but I have no idea which cartridges use the same ROM type. Further, it won't help if in fact the ROM got fried somehow (and that's what I currently suspect, because all PCB-traces seem to be o.k.).

I just applied new solder to all solder points, but this cartridge seems to be a real no-go. Must be one of the rare cases of a fried ROM chip. The only thing I get are some wobbling colour-bars and some high pitches sound. Not too exciting... The last thing I could maybe try is fitting a new capacitor.

Using a hair-dryer, I managed to open up the cartridge without destroying the label. What I found inside looks different from the other board posted earlier in this thread. Could somebody tell me wether this is still an Eeprom or not? Why did Bomb use a different PCB for "Great Escape"?

Sure, but don't tell me that I didn't warn 'ya... Here you go... (yuck!)

This is how the back looks like (made a scan). What about opening the cartridge and cleaning/resoldering some points? Unfortunately, I don't have an EEPROM burner, so I would first try every other possibility.

Unfortunately, my label looks even more "washed out", so I doubt it would be of any use to you. Sorry... It looks as if it _had_ one, since there are some remnants of glue on the back of the cartridge.

Hmm, it seems my options are now between the following a) sell it broken (and get less for it) b) open it and possibly destroy the label (reducing its value but with the chance of fixing it) c) don't touch it and forget about it What would you do?

I recently picked up a batch of different cartridges, with two of them were not working properly (Dragster and Z-Tack) and only displaying funny sounds and colours. Since all cartridges were quite dusty, I cleaned them using Q-tips and some alcohol. Bingo, Dragster was working again! But no go with Z-Tack, which is a real pity since that cartridge seems to be much more rare. Any suggestions how to proceed? Should I open the cartridge at the risk of breaking it? How do I open it at all *properly*? Z-Tack is listed with rarity "9" on AtariAge. I think it must be at least worth trying to fix it...