S1500

When I saw the proposed future products for Atari 8-bit systems, etc, it seemed to really have an obsolescence-friendly design. There seemd to be too much hardwired & hard-addressed expansion, with no regard for the future. Scalability? Eh, not so much. Today, you can put as much or as little RAM you want in a system, as well as hard drive space, etc. With hardware only coming from one company in a self-contained unit, and little 3rd party support, it didn't seem destined to last forever.

Personally, I think making repro Atari 2600 game boxes is taking the love of classic video games a bit too far. With what Panic did & the makers of the Venture Brothers DVD covers(putting your twist on it) is rather nice.

Interesting. Just last wekeend, I tried to desolder some stuff off a motherboard. Nope, impossible without that suck-tool. I'm trying to get some db-9 ports off of a dead motherboard.

I don't mind. He puts in a lot of soundbytes from the 80s, including bumpers for commercials & the commercials themselves. I actually like that. Retronauts intentionally pads out the shows with video game songs generally not worth listening to. Retroist spruces it up the right way.

I hope with the FB3 I can play Duke Nukem Forever on it.

Not unlike the Microvision's games, why not make games that just use the 24x32 tile blocks easily available in the TI-99/4A? Even with that painfully low of a resolution, you have the world's oyster of gaming possibilities available. You don't even have to do individual 8x8 pixel graphics if you don't wanna. The only limiting factor probably is speed in BASIC, which can be augmented somewhat with Extended BASIC. Assembly of course would give you the real fun boost. This might be a fun way to get into basic(ie simple) game programming for anyone. A breakout-like game? Sure, but all I ask is more than 3 angles the ball could thwack the Vaus with. Low-rez game ideas: Space Zap A simple maze-game(like the Atari 2600 one) a crummy 3-d maze game(a la movement in Tunnels of Doom). Making the look-ahead code would be fun, as you would have to draw the perspective ahead of you in U-shaped sections. Tile-based puzzle games(see other thread) A DIY port of Blasto. Add variants A crude version of Minesweeper. The "shoot through the scrolling field" game that's on my LCD keychain. Imagine Arkanoid with the blaster powerup and no pesky ball + Breakout's advancing playfield. Namco's Digger. The list goes on and on.

Europad = better. Chalk another "european is better than USA" thing up. And that euro gamepad general shape would be the shape of things to come.

I don't have Slither. I popped in Venture, and if I try going up, it goes up for a bit, then down, and then nothing at all(with the main controller). Controllability is still horrendous with this unit, and all too often I get weird graphics when I try to play a game. Regardless of all the cleaning & repair I have done to this, it seems to be better a conversation piece than a console to play.

There's some balance differences in Fallout 1+2 versus 3. In Fallout 1+2, enemies can actually run out of ammo, and frequently do. Then they just go melee. The Wanamingos in F2 were unfairly hard, on ANY level.

Well, I just tried roller controller + Turbo. Wow is this unplayable. I have to swing madly just like the freak at the bar playing Golden Tee just to get it to steer a little bit.

tigameshelf.net has both Legends games. Even the docs as well. Some of the battles in Fallout 1 or 2, some random, some written are just plain HARD. Even on super-high levels. There's one part in a military base where so many Super Mutants attack, your companions are guaranteed to die. You can escape by going up an elevator, then back down again, and they are clustered around you. Then shoot a rocket, take some side damage, but all of them get hit. Otherwise, random encounters have a LOT of freakin critters/baddies where it's basically 12 on 1.

So I decided to hanker down & play "Legends 1", an RPG for the TI-99/4A, where I knew the author(who lived a mile from me). I wish I could say better things about this RPG. Sadly, it has some game-killing flaws. 1. Way too many random monster encounters. The encounters happen in real-time. Sadly, it's seems to be set for literally every 3 seconds you are on the map. If you finish a battle, you are returned to the map,and bam, even before MOVING, you can get another monster encounter. You can barely move past the beginning of the map. It should be on a movement basis, not on a realtime basis. You could theoretically run into monster encounters over & over again without the opportunity to move. Guess what, it happens here. 2. The "noob vs. the world" syndrome. I encountered this with the Fallout series of games(1 and 2 at least). Your beginning characters have weak skills & weapons. You encounter nothing but trained assassins. I recall tunnel rats in Fallout are trained UFC fighters who NEVER miss. You? You always miss until you get your stats up. I don't like RPGs where you can die in the first battle. Jeesh. 3. Character dead? Yep, it's dead forever. Healing potions don't work on corpses. And who's always the first to die? The wizard in your party, who ironically is the only one with the magic skills to resurrect dead players. 4. Useless "avoid the battle" options, like threaten, greet, intimidate. No point in using them, as they will always fail. I moved onto playing Legends 2, with already pre-saved characters. Apparently someone else got equally frustrated, as I now have super-high level characters, with hit points in the 400s + good gear. I can slaughter my way through, PLUS have the option to run away from encounters. Fallout 2 has that, which is nice. I remember for Fallout 1 + 2 I booted up the cheat utility to give maximum hitpoints for my character, as my game progress would be quickly cut short. The Legends games have a difficulty level. I always chose the easiest, which had no effect. I would have loved to have the difficulty level actually mean something, like limit the # of monsters encountered, less wandering monster frequency(ie down from 100%), etc. Nope. I remember dying quite quickly in the early Ultima gams. Oops, did I get near a diseased person? I'll be dying in 4 minutes without combat.

I just realized: There isn't a market for those games now, just as there wasn't a market demand for them at a much higher price just after the crash. It's the no-sale gift that keeps on giving!

LOL, I was HUGE into wardialing back in the day. I'm surprsied my phone line didn't get disconncted + fraud charges with all the dang wardialing I did. I started with a Tandy 1000HX(a PCjr clone, essentially) and a program called "ToneLoc". I knew that program VERY well, and kept real good notes on which to call out where. I once even video recorded the sessions for 6 hours at a time, just so I could hear what picks up on the other end if there's anything juicy. I found many many fun systems to explore back in the day, sometimes with almost no security. Heck, I even had it run a script upon connection & had it type in root<cr> root<cr>, and once it actually logged in. Shiva LANRovers were worth their weight in gold since you could outdial from them. The furthest distance I called a BBS was Croatia. Hell, change the escape code to THEIR modems, and could theoretically run ToneLoc from their outdial numbers. Another system was to administer a voice mail box group. So I made my own account, and you were able to search for it by name via the IVRs. Ah those were the days. I realized as of 2009, I have been "online" 20 freakin' years, starting out on a TI-99/4A calling BBSes. Oh have times changed.

I'm getting 393k/second. Wow.

Okay, now I'm getting reminded of this Onion article. http://www.theonion.com/content/news/laid_off_ford_employee_decides_to

I think a good idea would be to explore cartridge interfaces that could work with a standard PC, whether it's USB or even through a PCI port. I saw the article on hackaday that lets you read SNES modules. Combine that with a decent emulator(emphasis on decent) and you could slap it on a mini-ITX mobo or something. Then add hardware bridging to use older controllers, and wallah: a ColecoVision clone. Could make for a fun kit with the cartridge interfaces alone. Of course add good video outputs that aren't RF.

I think you have 2 radically different designs competing here. One is a modern console that can compete with a Xbox 360 or PS3 with the latest & greatest hardware. The other is a backwards compatible design with 30+ year old hardware(Atari 2600, etc). The two will not mix. Trying to make a console to compete with the big boys is a massive task that can't be done in a garage with a few friends. It's like trying to make a car to compete with GM, Ford & Chrysler in your backyard. And that's not even including fabrication costs. Others have tried & we all know the fates of them. A ColecoVision's architecture wouldn't know what to do with HDMI, or surround sound. It's like trying to teach a caveman to fly a predator drone.

Plays Atari 2600 games, but has 1 gig of RAM & HDMI? Bizarre mix of specs. It's like putting a GPS nav unit on a Ford Model T.

Didn't someone post a youtube video of the foreign version of this, with irritating music?

I saw this while looking for pinouts for TI-99/4A stuff. This project is for wiring a Genesis controller for use with a computer's parallel port + a homebrew driver. Found this URL: http://pinouts.ru/Game/genesiscontroller_pinout.shtml Don't worry. Even though it's a Russian site, so far no credit cards have been taken from me. Before I start whipping out the soldering iron, I would love to hear if anyone else has done this. This looks like a fun rainy day project, ie a sorta-kinda maybe Stelladaptor, but not USB, and with a Genny controller.

I like how "arcade zone" is like a modern day arcade: just a bunch of kiddie games like skee-ball & whack a mole. No "arcade" game we are used to in sight.

I remember reading an issue of Family Computing that had an article about computer camps. It looked, uh, strange. With the high cost my mom was quoted for computer camp, needless to say I wasn't going that year, or any year. Why do I have a feeling this worked out to be a blessing in disguise? For the Family Computing article, I don't remember if it was specifically an "Atari" camp.

He's by no means a video game hoarder. I just thought it was funny he had 3 consoles lying around + he wouldn't let go of a PSX RPG CD(whoa too many acronyms), or the dog hair.

COUGAR RULEZ!