SmileyDude

A friend of mine was given a 5200, so he passed it along to me Saved me from having to either beg my dad for his or buy one off ebay It's a 4-port, but it came with box, 2 joysticks (one broke -- oh well), and 6 unboxed games -- now I can start seriously buying games for the system (I already have 3 NIB games that will remain NIB ) Looks like I'll be playing Atari tonight

I'm pretty sure Nintendo could've come out with hardware to match the Lynx earlier -- but, that's not what the game is about. It's about making something that you can market, sell cheaply, and make a huge profit. The Lynx failed at all three. Part of being cheap is also making it so that you don't need to buy a battery factory just to feed your portable game. I remember the Lynx and the GB when it came out. I drooled over the specs of the Lynx. There was an article in Analog magazine (I think...) that talked about developing for it. It was so cool. Then, when I went to go buy something, the Lynx wasn't cool in other areas -- battery life, physical size, and price. At that time, the games wasn't that big of a deal, but you could still see that Nintendo had a better footing on the market than Atari did. So, I got the Gameboy... while still wishing that I could've gotten the Lynx instead. So, Atari beat Nintendo on the technology side, but as so many companies have learned (and Nitendo being one of the best to learn this), technology doesn't win you customers. That's why the GBA is still limited compared to what it could've been. That's why the GameCube is so limited compared to the Xbox. Anyway, this isn't going to be very productive. For the techies, the Lynx is a great machine. For the game players, maybe the GBA would be a better choice. There is nothing saying you can't get both

Well, without Mario and Pokemon, the GBA would have just about as much market as the Lynx does -- as I recall, Pokemon pretty much saved Nintendo on the handheld side. At the time it came out, the Gameboy Color wasn't even out yet. Pokemon ended up selling loads of GBs and GBCs for them.

With a device called a linker that connects to your PC (via Parport or USB) and you plug the cart into that to program it. The cart sizes are measured in megabits, not bytes. So you have to divide by 8 to get the size in megabytes. I have a 256 megabit cart, which is 32 megabytes. There are already a few emulators out for the GBA -- a couple of Spectrum ZX emus, a couple of NES emus, and a few more that really aren't at a usable state yet. As far as specs on the GBA, in addition to the cart ROM/Flash, you have 3 blocks of internal RAM -- a 256k block, a fast 32k block, and a 96k block for video. The GBA actually supports loading code over it's link port, and executing out of RAM -- there are a number of commercial games that support this, and one of the emulators also supports this (PocketNES).

Here's my take -- the Lynx was definetly the best of the handhelds back when it was released -- and, it stayed at the top for quite a long time. But, it has been passed by the GBA now, no doubt about it. The GBA has much better specs than the Lynx, and it has an incredible game library to go along with it (GB, GBC, GBA). Add in the fact that you can easily get 15 hours of gameplay with 2 AA batteries, and the GBA is way ahead of the Lynx. As far as game prices go, the most I've paid for a GBA game is $30 (US) -- and I have about 12 games. I find that most of the games when they come out are usually on sale at one of the big chain stores (Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, etc, etc). I got Sonic Advance for $24, and Mario Kart for $22 (with a free 2-liter of soda). The deals are there. I've also found that some of the earlier 3rd-party games are discounted heavily at places like Target and wholesale clubs (Sams, Costco, BJs) -- I've gotten a few games for $8 a piece, new in the box. Also, you can always buy GB/GBC games -- they are much cheaper, and there are some pretty good ones out there. Not Lynx quality, but still fun. BTW, for those who love the Lynx and the GBA, there is news of a Lynx emulator being worked on for the GBA -- it's slow right now, but the coders working on it have a lot of optimizations planned for it. Go to http://www.geocities.com/psx_nemesis/ for more info (no downloads yet).

The GP32 is a neat box, but I personally think it's a limited market -- it's gonna get the homebrew support, but that's pretty much it. Don't count the GBA out for Atari 2600 emulation -- I'm pretty sure that it's possible, and at a playable speed. I personally prefer the GBA over the GP32 -- it's got commercial games, and better hardware support. Programming for it is similar to the consoles of old, but with a modern CPU The GP32 is more like programming for a PC -- the hardware isn't very capable on it's own, so you have to program any and every effect yourself. For example, the GBA has hardware rotation and scaling -- the GP32 doesn't. The GBA has transparency effects -- the GP32 doesn't. The GBA has the ability to do 4 layers of tiles, plus sprites -- the GP32 has a framebuffer that you draw into yourself. To understand the big difference, with the GBA, moving a character around on the screen is as easy as updating a register or two. With the GP32, you have to erase the old copy of the character, and redraw it in the new position. This means that a lot more of the CPUs time is spent updating the screen. So, while the GP32 might have a more powerful processor, a lot of it's advantage is erased by the very poor graphics support. Now, put the GBAs hardware graphics in a GP32 with the bigger screen, faster processor, and SMC support, and I'll buy one in a heartbeat

Bluto from Popeye?

The Millipede

And now I know -- Yar's Revenge and Defender.

I just confirmed it -- it is Haunted House. Good call on that one So, now my question is that when in Haunted House's life was it known as Nightmare Manor? And, would a group of people pirating Atari games have known that it was called that? This find is becoming very interesting -- first, it's not just EPROMs, but ROMs as well. Second, one of the games is labled with it's development name and not the release name. I'll check the two unlabled ROMs next -- who knows what those two will be...

Yeah -- I've figured out the terminology now, I'm so used to newer tech that I had forgotten about EPROMs and mistakenly called them EEPROMS On the ones that are labled EPROMs, you can feel the window -- on the ones that are labeled ROMs, it's completely smooth under the label. I'm reasonably certain that the ROMs are really ROMs and the EPROMs are really EPROMs -- I still don't get why they just wouldn't put the ROMs back into the cart they came out of after copying them?

Interesting... I'll compare it with the screenshots for that game, then

There is this -- http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html...areLabelID=1592 -- but without any screenshots, it wil be tough to tell if this is the same thing. I have this one listed as a ROM, so maybe I'll peel back the sticker on this one to see what it is For all I know, it's a version of E.T. that someone mistakenly thought was a nightmare

To be honest, I haven't tried it yet -- I might give it a try sometime in the next few days -- since I have the Atari connected to the TV all the time, it's a bit easier than it used to be

Mario

and the rest of the pics

I took some photos -- please excuse the quality, the camera is kinda cheap and the lighting wasn't that good.

Doh! Now that you mention it, that makes sense! I wonder why I didn't think of that...

Hi, When I got my two 2600s earlier this year from my Dad, there was 3 boxes with loose EEPROMs and ROMs in them -- are these typically worth anything? I thought it was kinda bizarre to find an EEPROM version of Combat in there (wasn't this bundled with the 2600 originally??) Also, all of the ROMs/EEPROMs are listed as either 16k or 32k -- I'm assuming this means kbits, which gives you the normal 2k and 4k when you divide by 8. Almost all of them are labeled, but there are two ROMs that aren't labeled: and Also, the third box appears to be all EEPROMs, but they have a holder that allows you to snap the chips into the cart without worrying about bending the pins. The other two boxes just contain the chips. Here is a list of the ROMs (not including the two un-identified ones above): Pinball - J Chess Checkers "Devils And Diamonds" - P -- I'm assuming that this is Demons to Diamonds Chess Beserk Casino Soccer - J Backgammon - P Nightmare Space Invaders - J 2 Pac-Mac -J Superman Dodge-Em -J Breakout - P Football The second box is EEPROMs: Sking - J Tennis - J Slot Racers - J Boxing - J Canyon Bomber - P Blackjack - P Skeet Shoot - J Surround Space War -J 3D Tic-Tac-Toe - J Kaboom - P Surround Basketball - J Laser Blast - J Freeway - J Bowling - J The third box appears to contain all EEPROMs, and they are in the holders I described above: Bridge Basic Programming Super Challenge Football Super Challenge Baseball Pac-Man Code Breaker Brain Games Concentration Unnamed -- but, it has AG-010 on it Baseball Combat Football Othello Backgamming Super Breakout Frogger I don't know what the Js and Ps are on some of the labels -- I thought it might be PAL for the P, but what would J mean? Also, the whole package came with two carts for the EEPROMs and ROMs -- one is a modified Space Invaders cart, the other looks like some kind of homemade board, no case. One thing that puzzles me is that I can see why someone would have a bunch of loose EEPROMs, but not why they would have a bunch of loose ROMs -- wouldn't it be better to keep the ROMs in the original carts??? Hopefully someone can shine a little light on this mystery for me I'll try to take some pictures later on and post them, but I don't know when I'll get the chance.

It's a shame that the 800 and 2600 weren't more compatible (like the 5200 and 800) -- sure, with the ANTIC chip, you wouldn't normally want to drive the CTIA/GTIA chip, but it would've allowed game development to go a little more smoothly -- just assemble, and run on the development machine. Then, you could occasionaly test on a real 2600 -- just to make sure that you didn't use some feature of the 800 on the 2600

1 Sir Dudley Dashly 2 QuickClaw 3 Beat 'em and Eat 'em guy 4 Mad Bomber Prize: Pete Rose Baseball

1. Lizzie (from Rampage) 2. Quickclaw 3. Rhonda 4. Mad Bomber Prize: River Raid II

Ack! Foiled again! -- I was going to try for the biggest Combat collection ever -- now I'll never be able to buy them all up Are you looking for only commons or will you take any dups? Not that I have multiple copies of Chase the Chuckwagon hanging around...

I wholehartedly agree with this -- I've been a GBA owner since day one (in the states), and there just hasn't been anything motivating me to buy lately. I have already purchased 12 games, but until Christmas, I don't see myself buying anything else for it. The homebrew scene has been much more interesting of late -- also, I've discovered a few Japanese games that should've been released here, IMO -- they're addicting, fun, and would probally sell nicely at $30. I'm really surprised that more companies aren't looking at what games sell, and learning from them -- nobody could've predicted how good Advance Wars was going to sell. In fact, most would've predicted complete and utter failure. The GBA is a great little machine -- but, it has inherited the legacy of the original GB/GBC and has been forced into having nothing but ports, licensed games, and original Nintendo games. And, while technically very good, the arcade game packs have been just too small, and in addition, there are usually other cutbacks, like lack of SRAM/EEPROM for high score saves. BTW, is Atari Advance an emulator? Or are all the games just ported over to the GBA?