gulag picture radio

Funny that you mention difficulty in locating those storage thingies for Atari games. I have found them to be quite common in thrifts. Usually they're the sort of bin that the Atari goes in as well as a stack of games, but I have found plenty of just standalone cart storage products. I have them for various Nintendo systems and even Genesis. They're sort of cool, in a terribly geeky way. I even found one made by K-tel I think that explicitly states that it's for Atari, Intellivision, Ti-99 (someone thought that was a selling point? ) 8-tracks or audio cassettes. It's nutty and not at all practical, but the box is fun. Speaking of which, I've found 8-track cases with handles and fitten compartments that serve for Atari storage pretty well.

Wow. I remember when practically every electgronic surplus catalog had these contreollers for 25 cents. I bought a couple to yank out the buttons to use in other projects before I really know what they were for. Glad that I kept one around just in case! The same went for Atari power supplies - those things used to be dirt cheap.

I seem to remember there being a Dave & Busters in the Lombard area. At least we can bust some Karaoke! My old band used to rehearse in Lombard, so I'm sure that once there I'll remember the lay of the land a little better.

How are the boards coming? I know that Philly is just around the corner, and my soldering iron is itchin' to do some moddin'. I did some recording of the Synthcart last month, and it just made me pine for the video mod even more. Thanks for any progress reports, guys!

Okay, now I'm confused. Here's what my desire is. This summer, I'm going to play a couple music gigs with Synthcart (among other things). What I'd like is a cartridge with the logo of the band. that way I pop it into the Atari, plug the Atari into a video projector, and voila - the coolest atari show in the city! The logo isn't done yet, but it may be done enough considering the low resolution of the finished product. So I have to submit it now in hopes that it's cool enough to be one of the 25 images that get made, or is that part of some other collectible thing? Sorry that I'm not getting this. All I know is that I can have an image ready soon, and my $5 even sooner. Let me know what the next step is. Thanks!

My crew and I are planning to be there. If I can get a good sized vehicle for the day, I'll bring a bunch of consoles and my Dreamcast standup store display! I figure that we'll rig the DC to emulate classic consoles or something. I was also going to bring along some Amiga stuff for trade or sale. I have lots of Amiga leftovers and this'll be a good time to lighten the load. Oh, and if anyone can bring a video projector we can crank some tunes and fire up the Atari Video Music. Let's make this a party guys!

Today the lords of thrift saw fit to smile upon me. I found a giant box of SMS games - all boxed. I picked up about ten of them including an Activision labeled game (I think those are rare). They also had a big sack of controllers for SMS including a roller ball, two guns, two controllers, video hookup wires, and arcade joystick (though the gearshift shaped handle is missing. I saw the box for the arcade stick on the shelf and thought that it was lucky that I found two of them in a day, but for some reason the box turned out to be full of rocks. (!) I also found an N64 with two controllers and some add-ons that I don't know what they're for. That was $4, and I picked up GoldenEye for another $4. The biggie today is that I found a "64-in-1" NES bootleg console for $6. I've seen this particular one before, but never for less than $50. It looks like an N64 controller with a gun barrel on the end. Yep, it plays Zapper games! It also included a second controller toi jack into it for playing 2 player games. There's also a big custom configuration cart that sticks out the bottom. When you fire it up, it gives you a menu of 64 games to chose from. Many have their titles changed and the sprites are hacked so it's somewhat less ovbious that these are stolen Nintnedo games. The weird thing is that when you pop off the cart, the unit still works and it becomes a "9,999-in-1" game unit! There are tons of repeat titles of course. I think that it's sort of like Game Genie codes... different game selections give you infinite life, start at a later level, etc. It's very cool and very flimsy so it'll get the kid gloves treatment from me. Haven't had a score this cool in a while! With the weekend coming up, I"m going to stay cocooned in my frozen Chicago apartment. To the rest of you, good luck finding great stuff!

In '78 or so, all the kids were talking about it. I saw Atari set up at Sears, Marshall Fields, and Musicland. Couldn't get much time on it at those stores... I used to get pushed around a lot. Later I remember ingratiating myself on a kid to invite me to his house for lunch on a school day so we could play a little Atari. At one point, I think that I might have logged more time on an Odyssey 2 than Atari since a girl that I played with had one. Of course that all changed drastically once I won mine in a local contest in '82-ish.

My father was in his 70's when I got the Atari (my folks had me pretty late). He and I didn't get along all that well being that he was 70 and I wasn't, but sometimes I could get him to play Atari with me. Mostly he liked Soccer Pong and COmbat. He had a characteristic laugh whenever his tank got blown through the wall while spinning... he liked that. We also played Warlords. Anything more complicated than that really wasn't up his street. My mother is now in her 70's and I couldn't dream of getting her to join me in some rounds of Atari. While she has several appliances that are quite complex to program and operate, she shies away from any other kind of technology. Though I do think that she played Video Pinball once or twice. It's nice to hear about the rest of you who were able to connect with your folks to play these games. Thanks for sharing these stories. I've really found them enheartening to read.

Does Ghostbusters also have the special Activision chip? I always enjoyed that music too while I was playing. I also found the overall sounds of DOnkey Kong to be very musical. Guess that's why that sound still shows up as a generic "video game" sound effect in commercials and TV.

My father was in his 70's when I got the Atari (my folks had me pretty late). He and I didn't get along all that well being that he was 70 and I wasn't, but sometimes I could get him to play Atari with me. Mostly he liked Soccer Pong and COmbat. He had a characteristic laugh whenever his tank got blown through the wall while spinning... he liked that. We also played Warlords. Anything more complicated than that really wasn't up his street. My mother is now in her 70's and I couldn't dream of getting her to join me in some rounds of Atari. While she has several appliances that are quite complex to program and operate, she shies away from any other kind of technology. Though I do think that she played Video Pinball once or twice. It's nice to hear about the rest of you who were able to connect with your folks to play these games. Thanks for sharing these stories. I've really found them enheartening to read.

I would just be interested in some of the "dorkier" patches to put onto a jacket. Most of the Ebay auctions that I've seen are for patches in good condition, but I'd happily take a couple of soiled/used patches to actually adorn clothing with. I'd love to ge the Freeway patch, along with Oink... how funny would that be? Representin' that I own at a pig-based game. Someday...

This week was really good for me. I found an Atari Jr. (wide rainbow style) for $3, Atari pinball console for $2.50, a Sunnyvale heavy sixer for $3, and a Genesis 1 with version 1 CD add-on for $10 (including the awesomely kitsch game: Moonwalker). I also fulfilled a longtime desire and I found a 2XL robot - the one that plays 8 track tapes. IF any of you out there have any tapes for it, I'd be interested! All I need is to find a PixelVision 2000, and I can finally retire from thrifting.

Hiya, A cople of days ago, I scored a Dreamcast store display. It hasn't worked in a long time (I guess thats' why they weren't able to move any of the games), so I'd like to get it running. The DC built into the display unit starts up, let's you change the time and switch screens to the VMU manager or the CD player, but the GD-rom doesn't seem to be reading data. I don't want to spend a lot of money on this project. I've already got a Dreamcast, so you can understand that getting another working system just isn't worth a lot of cash to me (after all, that leaves me less dough to spend on Atari carts at the thrift! ), so I'm hoping tha one of you may have a cracked or damaged DC that you don't want and I can just drop the guts into the display unit that I have. I don't have a tradelist organized yet, but I have a number of classic consoles that I'd trade like Odyssey 2, SMS, Genesis, even a few games for each. I also have a TON of Laser Discs (including anime stuff only released in Japan) that I could trade as well. Just thought that I'd put the feelers out there so I don't have to spend $30 to get a console on Ebay (and make my girlfriend want to throw me out of the apartment even more...) Thanks!

I wish tha I could be more help here, but I saw some guy online who had built all his retro consoles into a nice aluminum PC case. I think that I saw it on a PC modding site, but there might be some good hints there. It was a very cool all-in-one unit... it just needed some more woodgrain if you asked me.

That's werid. Here in Chicago, I've found several batches of O^2 games. Twice it was big lots of 10-15 games in their boxes. That's another weird thing... they turn up in their original packaging way more than other games I've found (though Intellivision games come close - I guess people kept the boxes so thaty'd have a place to store the overlays). All this stuff is crammed into my storage space so I don't know what I've got. I know that there are several dupes including KC Munchman, but it'll be a while before I get around to organizing that part of my life. If I find anything good, I'll let you guys know.

Wish that I had the scratch for something like that. I seem to recall larger displays as well. Like freestanding ones that looked like the VB was a periscope in a futuristic submarine. Given what the tabletop one got, that must be serious bank for the freestanding one. Are you looking totrade something for it? I don't have a list up yet, but I do have a great deal of stuff that I'm getting rid of... video game, Laser Disc, video and film production gear, musical instruments, etc.

I'd probably be interested since it combines my interest in videogames with oddball audio. What would you like for it? I don't have a tradelist put together yet... but I'm sure that I could scare up some music CD's that you'd enjoy in its stead. Feel free to PM me if you'd like.

This week wasn't terribly kind to me as far as finds at thrifts, I'd like to find more Saturn games around here. I take it as a good sign that someone here found some. Oh, and Pokemon PInball is a great game with the little rumble pack... But the beauty thing that I got today was free from CompUSA. I got their Dreamcast store display. It's so cool, it's like a mini stand-up arcade. My plan is use it for those great emu's out there so I can play 2600 games arcade style, along with the occasional bout of Jet Grind Radio! And to think that I somehow got it in the back seat of my '91 Corolla... the only minus is that the Chicago wind really picked up today and I got several splits in the skin on my hands from being outside trying to get the base off. Still these are the hazards of getting video game freebies.

Yeah, I'm slobbering over seeing this finished. I've got a modded six switch that's not working 100% yet. It would be nice to just pop in one of these sweet boards instead of having to check and see what I did wrong. Seriously, I hve several six switches to mod so that I can cut some phat tunes with Synthcart. I'd love to "beta" the procedure for you guys!

The discussion of 3D gaming is very interesting to me. 3D has always been a hobby of mine, I've got the Sega 3D system along with the Amiga one (even an adaptor to use the amiga glasses on a PC). I think that the only feasible method on the 2600 would be the red and blue anaglyph, and I question how well it would work. Polarized techniques only work with projected images on a polarized (lenticular) screen. Normally, one needs to use two cameras and two projectors for this method, but I actually have a 16mm film camera with a special lens and corresponding projector lens that let you do it all with one camera. Needless to say, this isn't something that can work in a video format. There is the dark lens over one eye technique which has some small chance of working, but I really doubt it. That's a fake technique that emphasizes the separation of the foreground and background in a moving image. This has been used in several places on regular TV - Third Rock From the Sun did some elaborate dream sequences using this technique, and in Britain there was a Doctor Who 15min. special (called Dimensions in TIme I think) that also used this technique. Basically, you keep on-screen foreground motion going from left to right, and putting a dark lens over one eye makes it seem more "dimensional". You can actually try this with any TV show, especially travel programs - or you can just stick your camcorder out the window of your car to get suitable footage. There is one more method that could work on the Atari. A couple years back, a company came out with paperboard glasses (much like the disposable polarized glasses you get at the movies), but the lenses were clear. They had an intersting effect. Objects that were red looked like they were behind objects that were green, and blue objects looked closest. It was all an optical illusion, but was surprisingly effective. I did an Amiga animation to experiment with the technique and strong primary colors worked well... something that the Atari could theoretically provide. Now I just have to remember the name of company. It was called Cybershot or something similar.

I haven't checked out the inside of the INTV2 yet, but once I do I may have a question or two for you. A couple months back, I was having some trouble with the similar mod on the Atari 2600. I've got it pretty much working, but there's a bunch of crosstalk between the two channels - obviously I did something wrong and need to re-check my work. Glad to hear that "stereo" is possible with the Intellivision too, though I'm not sure what I'd gain. What complicates it further is that the synthesizer hooks up through the ECS computer attachment and that adds three more voices to the original Intellivision. It's pretty cool since I can play six note chords on the keyboard, but splitting all that audio apart might make life difficult. Is there any reason that you'd recommend doing the "stereo" mod? are there any games out there that take advantage of it? Thanks for getting in touch. Nice to know that there's someone I can ask about this. BTW is it possible to do Chroma & Luma output for S-video? Thanks again, and Happy New Year!

Hiya, Found a textfile on Digital Press talking about adding audio and video outputs to an Intellivision. Has anyone around here ever actually done it? I'd like to mod my INTV2 because I've got the Intellivision synthesizer and it would be really cool to hook it up to a real amp rather than loop the sound through a television. Thanks for any advice!

I checked out the "touch-me" cabinet that's up for auction here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=1946478650 The description mentions that the game wasn't released, but I distinctly remember it from my childhood. My family and I used to go to this clinic in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin and stay at the adjoining hotel. They had this tiny snack shop there, and a few games. This would have been in the mid seventies sometime, and I remember them only having one or two video games and they were black and white- seem to remember a combat-type game. Anyway, they had the "Simon" like game called "Touch-me" and I remember it looking like the cabinet that's for sale on Ebay. If the Atari version wasn't released, could it have been a bootleg or a rip off or something? I'm insanely curious for no good reason... Thanks for any info!

Yeah, please keep me on your advance list too. And if you need more Asteroids, you just let old uncle Gulag know...