Room 34

I seem to recall a discussion on here years ago (YEARS! sheesh, I've been a member of this forum for SIX YEARS!!!) where someone noted that if the metal in the connectors on the cart and the metal in the connectors on the console were different metals/alloys, they could potentially react, especially if left in contact for an extended period of time. I'm not a metallurgist so I don't know if there's any validity to that, but it sounds plausible.

This comes up again and again but it's always fun. Sadly I've gone modern and the 2600 hasn't been getting the love lately. But at any rate, in the past I'd have said (and in fact, I did) my top 5 were: H.E.R.O. Solaris Kaboom Frogger Keystone Kapers I'm not totally sure I'd still say the same. Overall my top 11 (from the article I linked to above) probably still stand, but I might reorder them a bit.

What I'd really like is for them to start releasing GB/GBC/GBA games for the Virtual Console. Of course, I have the Game Boy Player for the GameCube, so I don't know what I'm complaining about...

I've thought about it a lot, but there's just no way. How would you replicate the dual screens, not to mention the touchscreen interface? I'd like to see console-playable adaptations of some DS games though, like New Super Mario Bros.!

Cripes. I just had to do some research to find out what this was all about. Now that my morbid curiosity has been satisfied, I can go back to wishing for the times when I didn't know Atari Charles existed. I still can't figure out why anyone ever cared to waste a single cent on his rubbish.

The only way I buy modern games used is if they're out of print. There's no way I'd buy a scratched-up used disc at GameStop just to save two bucks!

Saw it on TV the other night... Very cool!

Wow, I hadn't checked out the site since the initial post, and it's MUCH improved. Nice work! You've definitely taken our advice to heart and I think you're on track to have a pretty good site.

Just added Super Smash Bros. Brawl!

Thanks, Random Terrain, for mentioning the astigmatism thing. I have moderate (and, unfortunately, increasing) astigmatism in both eyes. Mine is especially bad because the orientation of the astigmatism between my two eyes is almost 90 degrees -- normally the angle is close to the same in both eyes. So with my glasses, one lens "squishes" my vision in horizontally, and the other vertically. The side effect of this is that my glasses make my whole field of vision seem like a TV screen that's tilted slightly away from me. Eventually I got used to it, but unfortunately as the condition worsens, I have to settle for an increasingly weak prescription in my glasses: even though individually my eyes can be corrected to 20/20, the combination puts such strain on my eye muscles (which don't like having to work in perpendicular directions) that I get an instant headache. A weaker prescription doesn't help my vision as much, but it also keeps me from getting splitting headaches. I fear eventually I might get to the point where there won't be an adequate compromise. Anyway... I REALLY digress. The point is, my eyes have very little tolerance for white-on-black on a computer screen. I get a retinal "burn-in" of whatever I'm looking at in a matter of seconds, to the point where after a minute or so, I can barely even read it anymore. You'll notice a lot of sites (like GameSpot) that primarily have a white-on-black scheme also have an option for you to reverse the colors. I always make that switch. But in general... look at the big, successful websites. Very few, if any, have a light-on-dark color scheme.

Has anyone ever seen this? The Super Target near my house that I seem to be at just about every other day has, in the game case next to the demo Wii unit, a DS sitting there, turned on and running a "Demo Server" program that turns the display into a quasi-command line interface. I am guessing this is the system that runs the demo download service where you can bring your DS into the store and download free demos. It's just weird for something like this to be left in plain sight, and I want to get my hands on that Demo Server game card. Seems like it would be something fun to play around with. (Well, probably not... but it would be a novelty, anyway.)

Lots of cool pictures... nice collection! One piece of advice I'd give as the most critical element of design of any website: You should really have a "global" navigation bar or at the very least a link back to the home page from each page of the site. Right now it looks like once you've drilled down into an area, the only way to get back to your main page is to hit the Back button, sometimes over and over and over if you've gone through several pages. Having a header/navigation bar at the top of every page, that's the SAME on every page, will help your visitors to keep track of where they are (including reminding them that they're still on YOUR site and not somewhere else), and make it much easier for them to move around the site. It's also very important if, for whatever reason, someone enters your site on one of the interior pages. For instance, say I posted a link on some other site that points to this page. Now you've got a new visitor who has come to your site directly onto this page, and without a header/nav bar (or the user mucking about with the URL in the address bar), there is absolutely no way for that visitor to get to any of the other pages of your site.

Gotta go with Super Metroid and Super Mario Bros. 3, although to be honest I've done most of my 2-D platforming on the GBA so Metroid Zero Mission is probably my personal favorite (along with the updated GBA version of SMB3).

Do you really want to join it? I've been glad ever since it was created that I am NOT involved in it.

One time back when I was in third grade my dad made the mistake of letting me play Pitfall! before school, and of course I was having my best game ever! So I convinced him to let me finish it even though I was going to be late, and he even gave me a ride when I was done. (Normally I walked to school but school had already started by the time I was done!) Unfortunately I didn't actually finish the game, but I did manage to run out the clock without dying, which had not happened before (other than just standing in one spot on a screen without rolling logs)...

I think the controllers are great on the good games, although for the most part, I probably would enjoy the games just as much with traditional controllers. Most games don't REALLY take full advantage of the controllers like they could. The biggest problem I have so far, and it's pretty much the same as with the DS, the library kind of sucks. There are a handful of really great games, but the vast majority just do not interest me at all. I guess that's maybe just a problem with the video game industry in general. I think we've actually gotten the most bang for our buck out of the Virtual Console games. My son and I have been playing old SNES games all the time!

Defender's a great game, just really hard. I personally think the 5200 version is quite difficult, but then I grew up on the easy-as-anything 2600 version. The biggest problem I have with the 5200 version is the way debris splays out in every direction when you blow up an alien ship, and there's no way to tell (other than by closely watching the trajectories) this debris from background stars or (the part that matters) enemy shots!

The Metroid music is definitely my favorite, and I've been enjoying Grant Henry's metal interpretations for the last several years...

Ah, it's good to see I haven't missed much around here lately.

The Metroid Zero Mission thing just got worse for me. I was watching my son (remember, he's just shy of 5) fight the mini-boss worm creature in the lava, and I was stunned... STUNNED... at how systematic he was about it. He knew every pattern of its behavior and played like a friggin' machine. I have no idea where he got that. When I face a boss I flail around spastically until (hopefully) it's dead. He knew exactly what he was doing. Amazing.

I'd suggest starting with another game concept, if for no other reason than even if you reproduce the basic mechanics of the game, it's unlikely that it will be anywhere near as engaging as the Atari version, simply because of the control mechanism. I don't remember much about the TRS-80, having never owned or used one, but I assume it doesn't have a paddle-type controller, and that's really the key. Just try playing the REAL Kaboom! in any of the Activision compilations (such as the GBA Activision Anthology), and you'll see what I mean.

MediaWiki is the program Wikipedia is built on. For me that's enough to consider it the "definitive" wiki app. Then again... I think wikis are overrated. It's a buzzword. It's the latest must-have whiz-bang thingamabobber. But it's not necessarily what anyone really needs (especially a business) and it's not necessarily the best tool for whatever you want to do. If you want people to simultaneously (note I avoided saying "collaboratively") create an interlinked set of documents in a free-for-all fashion, and you're willing to live with the results, then go for it, as there's very low overhead. But there's also very little (inherent) structure. The wiki will allow you to quickly get your ideas onto a web page, but it won't organize them for you, and usually that's what people REALLY need. Back on topic... yeah, I don't think the Atari world really needs a wiki. What it needs is a reliable source of information/archive, and a place for like-minded people to share their thoughts. In other words, this site. Which really just proves my point.

OK, maybe I let my son start playing the games too early. He got hardcore into Mario games around his fourth birthday, and he got his first own game system (a hand-me-down DS, from me, so I could get a DS Lite ) a couple months later. He loves the games and he's frighteningly good, especially at his long-time favorite, New Super Mario Bros. He turns 5 in March (2 months from now). I got him Super Mario Galaxy for Christmas, and we've together just gotten up to 60 stars, but I think he was responsible for at least 40 of them. But here's the thing that really gets me. He totally (for lack of a word from my own generation that properly conveys my meaning) pwnz me at Metroid Zero Mission. The only part of the game that he needs any help from me on at all is the part in the space pirate ship after you lose the power suit (right after the Mother Brain fight). But for the most part he is way better at it than I am, particularly at fighting the Metroids leading up to Mother Brain. I've played through the whole game twice in the 3 years that I've owned it, the first time taking 10 hours and the second 7 hours. He's probably played up through Mother Brain at least 3 or 4 times in the last week, and it's never taken him more than 3 hours. Granted, he's only getting about 50% of the power-ups, and I'm an obsessive 100% seeker, but still... he can beat Kraid or Meta-Ridley almost with his eyes closed, whereas either of those fights takes just about everything I've got. I used to be able to at least argue that he just has quicker kid reflexes, but my more developed adult intellect helped me with the challenges he couldn't handle, but he's pretty much already at the point of overtaking me on that level, too! So... for those of you with kids, what's been your experience with their gaming prowess?

So are you saying that if you play through as Luigi and get all 120 stars plus one new one, it has Mario AND Luigi, that is, two-player simultaneous? Or what? (My son and I [he's done about 75% of it] are up to 56 stars now. His enthusiasm for this game has not waned one bit since Christmas morning!)

This is tough, as I'm really into Wii/DS/GBA/GameCube these days so I'm not looking at things objectively. Also, I scarcely ever really touched any systems between the NES and the GameCube. I owned a Sega Game Gear in the mid-'90s but rarely played it; I've still never played an actual SNES console, although I've played lots of the games in emulation or GBA remakes; same goes for N64; I maybe once or twice played in-store demos of the Genesis and PlayStation; and I have still only ever had one gaming session on a PS2. I do own an XBOX and I've played a friend's 360 a few times, but honestly after my Atari childhood I've pretty much been a Nintendo fan(boy) for the last 20 years, even though like I said, I skipped the SNES and N64 (and the original Game Boy and GB Color). That said, it might be interesting to look at how many games I have for each system in my collection, as a representation of my relative interest in them: CONSOLE Atari 2600: 207 Atari 5200: 20 Atari 7800: 25 Intellivision: 19 NES: 16 GameCube: 22 XBOX: 17 Wii: 9 HANDHELD Game Gear: 10 GBA: 22 DS: 29 Of course, aside from my old childhood 40 or so 2600 carts, all of the games for the "vintage" systems above were purchased on eBay for $5 or less, so there's not as much of a commitment to my 20 Atari 5200 games as there is to the 22 GBA games, for instance. (Also, a few of the GBA and Wii games, and about 1/3 of the DS games, are "technically" my son's, not mine, but they're all in my game collection database. And I didn't count my Wii VC games, which number around 15, I think.) Giving this some weight and adding a healthy dose of subjectivity (and combining backward compatible systems together), I'd rank them this way: 1. DS/GBA 2. Wii/GameCube 3. Atari 2600/7800 4. NES 5. Atari 5200 These are just my personal preferences, of course. If I had to rank them a bit more objectively in terms of overall cultural significance (and including systems I don't own or necessarily like), I'd probably say: 1. NES (savior of home video gaming) 2. Atari 2600 (the one that made home video games a big deal) 3. GBA (still the reigning king of handhelds) 4. PS2 (probably the most dominant and ubiquitous system since the NES) 5. SNES or Genesis (perhaps the only era that didn't have a clear "winner" in the console wars, IIRC)