NovaXpress

Now there is a thread idea, arcade games you were stuck playing because they were at your parent's favorite grocery store. I remember always going to a store that had 2 machines: Space Force (Universal's raster Asteroids clone) and Cosmic Avenger. I didn't care for either but it was all I had to play while they went through checkout. Cosmic Avenger finally burned out and was replaced with Centipede. Happy times.

You and I may be the only arcade-style Solar Fox fanatics alive

If I can fire the cannons on the C-64 version I'll be all happy. Going back to the 80s I never knew of one Commodore owner who owned a non-pirated game. Were those games easy to crak or what? So where do you stand on the Atari version? The people demand to know!

dead ... Bugs ... Too many jokes possible. Can't pick just one. Man there are a lot of sirens going off all over Maple Street right now. Well anyway, back to the databases

Are Data Age carts typically burned out? All of mine are still going strong and the labels have really help up as well.

I never knew of a C-64 version. That was the home of some great arcade translations.

We've all seen the drawings. An actual game is not known to exist. There are rumors that the creator of the long-awaited "Knight Rider" 2600 project may be working on his own Hulk game as we speak, so let's hope for the best.

You're the first one who's been able to stand playing the game long enough to set a record.

I hate this game, I have no use for any of the initial five Data Age games except Encounter at L-5.

The arcade cabinet was sweet. Nice bass speakers at ear level, groin-grabbingly good sound effects. The glowing red Tron-style stick. Looked great in a dark arcade. It's a shame that more people didn't get a chance to play it properly. I agree entirely that its all a popularity issue. So maybe the proper argument against Atari's PacMan is: "With the importance of such a pop-culture phenomenon, Atari needed to put in an extraordinary effort to produce a good game. Spend extra on RAM, pay Activision to do it for them, whatever it would take."

Solar Fox was as much a violation of the arcade game as Atari's Pac-Man yet no one is mad about this one. Why does everyone hate Pac-Man? "It's NOTHING like the arcade game. I don't care how it plays on its own merits. The first job of a translation is to please the arcade fans." How many of you have made this argument? Yet Solar Fox is so far from the original that it should have been retitled. If you defend Solar Fox then you need to get a new argument against Pac Man.

The whole point of emulators is that you get a taste of games that you will NEVER see again in your local arcade.

So how many of you almost made a mess in your pants when you saw the name of this thread?

The arcade and 2600 games are entirely different. I was a rabid arcade player and still don't look at them as the same game. The 2600 version is a dot-eater pure and simple. The arcade was a mix of dot-eating and shooter. In addition to the extra sentinels, there were ships flying around the playfield. To survive you had to play 2 types of game at once, look at the playfield for the "dots" to munch while also looking at the playfield as open space filled with intergalactic targets to shoot and avoid. When I first plugged in the home version of Solar Fox I was as disappointed as all you Pac Man fans were when that game came to the 2600. The home version did have great play value though WHEN LOOKED AT AS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME. I wish that a true arcade-style Solar Fox could have made it to the 5200. The arcade version used a Tron-style trigger joystick which doesn't have the right feel for this type of game and made it harder than necessary. It was a flop but the Old Town arcade in Toledo had it for aa year and I dumped many dollars into it.

Bring on the eyestrain. But is there any visual pain quite like the bright blue screen of Missile Command?

Now you're really gonna be eyeballing my Wico

Data Age did turn out a couple winners at the end. Frankenstein's Monster is a great one and I also liked Bermuda Triangle. I can't think of any US Games cart I really enjoyed, maybe Commando raid because I get a kick of shooting unarmed and helpless paratroopers.

I expect to see EGM pulish the proposal for a KISS 2600 game next month.

Solar Fox and Krull are also big time favorites of mine, I think this is the first outpouring of appreciation for these games.

It's crazy that Monroe images are still copyrighted, just like Elvis, James Dean, etc. Now that all popular intellectual property is owned by corporations, not people, we shouldn't expect anything new to enter the public domain.

I think I just blew a synapse. I can't even make a joke about this.

I'm going with Encounter At L-5. I expected less than nothing from the people who brought me Warplock and most of the reviews are horrible but I played the hell out of it and still count it among my favorites.

Plug one in and find out. Be sure to wear safety goggles! An EPROM explostion could be catastrophic.

You should show up for competition wearing a Mindlink and really intimidate the kids.

An old Electronic Games suggested a joytick that had a half-speed feature. It looked just like the Channel F controls with a extra button that would slow you down by jugglig the switch rapidly back and forth. This supposedly resulted in much improved scores.