almightytodd

I didn't try until 8:55... ...saw the post indicating it might be down while the server-swap was underway...

Forum is showing for me on the new server so HOORAY! Congrats Albert and well done.

A few things: First, 2,600 + 5,200 = 7,800... ...so that should give you a hint to the naming schemes for these consoles. Second, I agree with the sentiment of getting a working 7800 to play 7800 and 2600 games. The 2600 game cartridges plug right into the 7800 slot without any adaptors or switches to mess with... ...the console will detect which kind of game it is and play it. Pack up your sentimental 2600 or find a creative way to display it. That solves your RF-connectors problem. Third, buy Marty and Curt's book, "Atari Inc., Business is Fun". Why? Because it is the most historically accurate retelling of how these different consoles came to be, and also Marty and Curt have done a lot for the Atari retro-gamer community and we should be supportive of their efforts. Fourth, once you have your 7800 up and running, take a look at the vast array of quality 2600 and 7800 games for sale in the Atari Age store that have been programmed within the last decade or so. These new games breath new life into these old consoles and have them doing things their original designers never dreamed of. Finally, learn more about the Atari line of 8-bit home computers; the 800, 400, and 800XL. Understanding that these were $1,000 machines when they were first introduced, and that the Atari 5200 was an effort to provide the no-keyboard and cartridge-software-only features of these computers as a home console game system will help explain why the library of games for the 5200 is more similar to the 800XL computer offerings than to other console systems. Enjoy exploring Atari videogaming!

I don't think I would be quite so blunt but I do agree with the sentiment. Please just let everything "go" and relax so your body can heal with as little stress as possible. There will be time for everything else once you're well. We all love this retro-games hobby but I don't think anyone would put it ahead of your health and well-being.

With thousands of games to choose from, and new ones being created each year, I choose not to have a favorite... ...I thought that was sort of the point.

Duane, you're always good for a laugh... ...I think I rank your humor thusly: The Daily Show The Colbert Report The Onion A typical Random Terrain post at Atari Age Saturday Night Live Steve Martin The Marx Brothers

Oh no! An infinite loop!

This is great news. This site already performs much better than Facebook on a variety of devices that I use; including Blackberry, Nook Color, and an old Pentium 4 machine with a quarter gig of RAM.

I'm really enjoying this thread and also playing the new version. One of the things that has always bothered me about this game is that HSW ordered the three game variations from hardest to easiest. In what universe does that happen? Since another game variation has been added to the three originals, how about re-ordering the variations so they start with the easiest and then get progressively more difficult? This would also leave open the possibility of adding some of the original game features back in for more difficult variations so that at the most difficult level, you're playing the game as it was originally designed? ...Sort of like an "E.T. Collection" cart in the style of the 7800 "Pac Man Collection". Suggested variations would be: 1. E.T. and Elliot and no enemies 2. Scientist only 3. FBI Agent only 4. Scientist and FBI Agent 5. Scientist and FBI Agent; fall into wells from any part of E.T. touching 6. Scientist and FBI Agent; fall into wells from any part of E.T. touching; E.T. loses energy from running and using powers Adding all of that might require additional memory and some bank-switching schemes, so it's probably not worth the effort. But it would make for the ultimate E.T. game experience and a pathway for improving playing skills up to the level being able to complete the original game.

It was headed for the dump? That's just wrong...

Original series, an episode from 1960 called, "A Nice Place to Visit". There's a one-minute clip of the ending on ...

One thing I can say - those video effects that you're showing from MESS in your screenshots are making a really good argument for me to switch from ProSystem. I've used MESS in the past, but there's a little bit of pain involved in getting the BIOS' for each system you want to emulate. I had to go through some of that for my Atari 800 and ST emulators though, so it's probably worth it. Up until now, I felt no reason to switch from ProSystem, which is easy to set up and run. But I'm really enjoying the look of NTSC effects on Stella, and I miss seeing them when I play 7800 games.

My hypothesis is that people are most likely to be nostalgic for the time period in which they spent their teenage years. There are a couple of primary reasons for this: - It is during this time when people transition from being pre-sexual to being sexual; and therefore they associate the things in their environment (cars, music, games) with sex. - The teenage years are a time when people begin to experience more of adult pleasures, but without the corresponding adult responsibilities. I think the one exception to this would be those who went through their teenage years during the 2nd half of the 1930s decade. But that's because it was during the height of the Great Depression, followed by WW II, which would then be experienced during their early 20s - meaning they would have been highly impacted by it. But if you look at the generations that followed; starting with the teenagers of the 1950s, you see a high degree of nostalgia associated with the teen years. Think of 1950s cars and the birth of Rock and Roll music. Keep in mind that the term, "Rock and Roll" is a euphimism for having sex. When DJ Alan Freed famously announced, "Now here's a song you can really rock and roll to", what he was really saying was, "Hey kids, listen to this on the radio while you're f**king in the back seat of your parents' car". That explains why the adult generation of the 1950s was so freaked out by rock 'n' roll and why it was so criticised by religious leaders at the time. If the period of time between when people go through their teen years and then begin to feel nostalgia for those years seems to be shrinking, I would suggest that is more of a function of how quickly their hopes and dreams are crushed by the reality of life than anything else. Contrast an American teenager graduating high school in 1958 with a typical member of the class of 2008. For the former, four years later and they're graduating from college; inspired by President Kennedy's pronouncement that we are going to the moon, and looking forward to a happier, more prosperous life than their parents, who went through the Great Depression and WW II. The class of 2008 on the other hand, is more likely to be struggling to even be able to go to college, or graduating to the prospect of no entry-level jobs that will help them pay off their student loans. Rather than seeing themselves doing better than their parents, they're more likely to be moving back in with their parents; assuming their parents weren't amongst the millions who lost their homes and jobs during the housing crisis. Anyway, I don't have enough data compiled to call this a theory, so I'm leaving it at the hypothesis stage for now. I also maintain that the "Atari Age" is somewhat unique for nostalgia involving technology, because it represented a major shift in the way people interacted with technology. For previous generations, the technological entertainment options were mostly mechanical; in the form of pinball machines and other similar mechanical devices. With the advent of the coin-op video game, followed by affordable microprocessors that made possible a whole new market of consumer devices (video game consoles and home computers), our culture entered into a completely new era. The major cultural technological shifts that have taken place since would include digital audio and video, the World Wide Web, and the advent of the mobile computing device era. All of those various cultural/technological shifts add to the "digital noise" surrounding advances in gaming systems, such that the degree of cultural importance of each new generation of gaming consoles was less significant against the backdrop of your first CD player; first DVD player; first participation in an online forum; first digital streaming video account, or your new Facebook account. Thanks to the OP for this topic. I really enjoy discussions like this.

Arcade-oriented game play, you say? How 'bout a 3-year-old off-lease PC loaded up with MAME? Can't get much more "arcade-oriented" than that!

The OP reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode where a gambler dies and finds himself in the afterlife. He's in a casino and invited to try his hand at the various games of chance. He plays his first couple of games, and to his surprise, he wins! But as he continues on he finds that he "always" wins. In frustration, he says to his "guiding angel" - "I'm not sure that I like this anymore. I think I want to go to the other place". To which the guiding angel replies, "Oh but you see, this is the other place...".

I'll agree with the choice of Toyshop Trouble as the best all-around original 2600 homebrew game. It really has it all; original concept, sound, graphics, and gameplay. I'd like to give honorable mention to a few of my favorites I haven't seen yet in this thread: - Lunar Excursion Module is a game that after you've played it, and you learn that it was programmed in Batari Basic, you'll think, "No way!". It has a title screen, music, excellent graphics and gameplay that you would think would require assembly language to create. Sadly, this one has not yet been released in cart form... - Halo 2600: Seriously, is this being disqualified because it's considered a "port" of Halo from Xbox? It's not clear to me whether carts of this game are still available or not. - Gunfight was "inspired by" a similarly named early Midway coin-op, but in fact surpasses it in all aspects of game-play, options, graphics, and sound, including the addition of music, with a VCS rendition of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" - Elevators Amiss is a fun and interesting game with a cute back-story and fun graphics. It was one of the first games I witnessed being developed when I first joined the Atari Age website, so I have several different versions of it as the game play, graphics, and options were being worked out. - Go Fish was also "inspired by" the Intellivision game "Shark Shark!", but it adds new dimensions to the game play. The cool effects created on the title screen alone make it worth a look. And finally, - Okie Dokie was one of the earliest games to be part of the homebrew scene, and the first homebrew ROM I ever played on an emulator. It's a puzzle-game, so the game-play is quite different from most VCS games. I don't hear much mention of this game in forum discussions. I suspect that may be due to the programmer not being an active Atari Age participant as most of the other homebrewers are. The info page for the game lists the programmer as "Bob Colbert", but the link to his web page appears to be dead.

A decent read overall, taking into account the inaccuracies noted above. I am disappointed that the author felt compelled to repeat the tired argument that, "It’s important to note, of course, that E.T. was a terrible game". It wasn't a terrible game; it was a unique, randomized puzzle-solving game in an era of mindless "twitch" games that was confusing to the thousands of people who pushed the cartridge into the console slot without ever looking at the manual.

Did you see the "Verminest" game at the same site? It features various video modes including "Old Movie" and "3D"! Very cool!

I really love the scrolling effect. I find it to be a novel solution to the rotated aspect-ratio problem that Donkey Kong suffers from for arcade-to-home console ports. Pac Man ports have the same problem and the Nintendo solution in that case was to put the score and status information to the right of the play-field: That solution doesn't "buy you" as much for DK, because in the arcade version, the scoring/status info is integrated into the play-field space rather than being strictly above or below it as it is in Pac Man. I remain very impressed by this effort and am looking forward to its continuing progress.

Are you this isn't you?

But if Microsoft gets its way and keeps stalling Linux vendors for UEFI keys, you will be FORCED to accept a machine that runs Windows 8 and nothing else... I would love to see at least one hardware vendor say "F*%k You" to Microsoft and start selling modern machines with BIOS chips that will run anything OTHER THAN Windows 8... Microsoft claims that UEFI is necessary to defend against bootloader-infecting malware, but the actual real-life risk seems to be somewhere up there with the real life risk of U.S. voter fraud that was the alleged motive behind voter restrictions in the last U.S. election...