SmileyDude

decathalon was a pain in the ass on the SP, but still completely doable. The trick is to use the L and R buttons, and to realise that you can hold down the L button, and just pound on the R button. I guess the original code never checks for the possibility of having the stick pushed left and right at the same time, since on a real joystick, that's impossible. Of course, playing on a real 2600, decathalon completely kicks my butt.

I'm certainly not an expert in this area, but since NTSC is based on 60hz and PAL on 50hz, doesn't that imply that you would need a 2600 that was at least matched up to 50 or 60hz? I would be interested in hearing more, if only to clear up my own ignorance in this area

Does anyone have a MP3 (cleaned up or not) of the music that played when States and Capitals was loading? Preferably from the second side, where the voice over was left out... If I could find my copy, I would happily dub it to MP3 format, but I don't exactly have the best equipment for it... BTW -- is there any effort to preserve the old Atari tapes in the original format? I think the uniqueness of the dual-track format deserves to be preserved. It's not like something that you can just recreate from a bin file of the program. You need to have the audio as well.

I have a few PowerMates here at work, and I find them very flakey -- at least with the hardware we have here (standard Dell Dimension boxes, running XP Pro). For example, on my machine, the PowerMate will remain in sleep mode (the light on the bottom just pulses on-off), and I can't get it to work at all. On another machine, it will sleep sometimes, and other times it will work. As far as mouse emulation goes, it can emulate a mouse. Of course, it's only on the X or the Y axis. Also, you can push the knob itself. By default, this is tied to mute/unmute, but you can change it to emulate one of the mouse buttons. On another note, I was thinking of modifying a driving controller with the guts of a mouse to make it work over USB. Has anyone done this? I would really like to have the old Atari retro feel, but on my PC or Mac instead.

LOL -- heh, while I would have to wholehartedly agree that the damn thing is very uncomfortable, I would have to say that the light is definelty not near-useless and having a propietary battery pack isn't that big of a deal. Sure, it will be annoying 10 years from now, but given Nintendo's track record with the GB, you'll be able to play all your GBA games on whatever the current GB console is. BTW -- does anyone know where you can get that Famicom SP in the US? That just looks so cool and retro, kinda like a Game & Watch game

Some personal favorites still in my collection -- Game And Watch Gallery, Revenge of the Gator, Super Mario Land 1-3... there are of course more, but those immediately come to mind. Also, as I recall, the early days of the GB had a lot of good puzzle games. Of course, when you pack in a game like Tetris, you're gonna get more puzzle games for the system

Back in the 80s, the only one I probably could've gotten was for Pitfall II... I loved that game (what am I talking about? I still do ) With AA on the GBA, though, I've been able to rack up quite a few patches -- including gold on Decathalon -- being able to use the L and R buttons helps alot, and you quickly find out that you can just hold down L, and tap R as quickly as possible I'm pretty sure that the real thing would kick my butt pretty badly. As for Space Shuttle, I've resigned myself to just not having that patch... way to complex for me...

Sorry for the double post -- I just noticed that the AtariAge pic for the heavy sixer console appears to have a non-heavy sixer joystick -- if you look closely at the pic, you can almost make out the "Top" on the joystick. And, it's missing the Atari hex disc as well....

I just found out that I have a heavy-sixer joystick as well (and I just thought it was a busted joystick with a mushy button ), and on the top, I don't see an indent where the hex disc would go. On the ones that had it, is there any kind of indent? or was it just glued right on top? BTW -- I think that mine came with a Sears console, cause it was in the same box as a heavy-sixer Sears console. I would assume that Sears didn't bother with having a hex disc.. or am I completely wrong, and someplace, there are hex discs that say Sears on them?

I tend to collect Atari and Nintendo stuff. But, honestly, I won't pass up any older video game or computer stuff if I find it in the wild -- I have a stack of TI-99/4A games, some Intellivision stuff, a C-64 someplace, old Apple IIs (lost count), etc. But, it's the Atari and Nintendo gear that I really like -- I've got a ton of GB/GBC/GBA games, some NES, SNES, N64, and now the cube. On the Atari side it's mostly 2600, but I have a boxed 5200, and some of the 8-bit stuff as well. I just need a place to set it all up

It took me a moment to realise what you were saying -- we have pedestrian lights here in Boston, but it really doesn't matter because people will cross them at any color, at any time of the day

Heh -- yeah, in the states, one year is a 'fairly long warranty'. The best part, though, has to be the warranty on software. If you get a warranty, it's 30 days at best. And then, it only covers manufacturing defects -- like a cracked CD. If the damn thing doesn't work on your system because of a software defect, that's not covered. If you try returning it, they don't give you money back -- they give you a replacement of the same title. I had this problem with one of the baseball games for the GCN -- the game was insanely buggy, and I wanted to get a different game. I had only had it for a day, and since you can't copy games on the GCN (yet), it shouldn't have been a problem. But, I had to argue my point with them that a replacement copy of the game wasn't going to fix my problem. They finally caved in, and let me exchange it for another game, but it was quite frustrating. BTW, this was at Wal-Mart, so YMMV...

Personally, I don't care much about the emulators for this box... like I said, I'm happy to be able to have a more powerful ARM platform to play around with. And, for once, it doesn't have to be a portable, like every other ARM machine (GBA, GP32, PocketPC, Palm, Tapwave, etc, etc). The whole purpose of this machine is to get people playing with the internals of a machine -- true, they could do that with an Atari 2600, or C-64, or some other older machine -- but, by having a slightly more modern setup, and hopefully, more available setup, it should help out a few more budding programmers. The only real downside to this box is that you won't be able to burn it to a CD or flash cart to use at a friends house. So, if you want to show it off, you have to show it off on your own setup, or find someone else who has the same box. But, if your goal is learn how to program at a level lower than Windows, MacOS, or Linux usually let you, then this is a great way to do it. (Yeah, I know that you can get to the lower levels when programming on the PC -- but, since that PC is typically your dev box, you usually don't want to. If you crash the XGameStation (or GBA or 2600 or whatever), it's no big deal. If you crash the PC, you have to wait for it to reboot...)

Actually, the GBA and GBA SP both have a fairly long warranty -- 1 year. Since the SP came out in march in the US, that would leave at least 4 months on the warranty, if it was bought at launch.

I've only played Keystone Kapers on a real 2600 -- and to me, it looks absolutely perfect. In fact, at one point, I was thinking of writing an updated version of Keystone Kapers on the GBA, but this version has completely removed that need. I had never played H.E.R.O. at all until I played it here. I think that it's a great game, but others have said that it is slower. (Anyone want to send me a H.E.R.O. cart so that I can try it out on the real thing? ) Kaboom is just too damn frustrating in my opinion -- the game was designed for paddles, and it is tough without them. Or, it could be that I'm just a sucky Kaboom player...

While I'm sure that frame skipping would help, I tend to not like it personally. But, having said that, I think that some frame skipping might have been done (though, I'm certainly not the final authority on this ) -- in Pitfall II, I could swear that when you die on the original, that the score updated quicker than it does on the GBA version.

Isn't there 55+ games in this collection? Well, that's still 40+ Sorry, I was just too lazy to actually look/count

Honestly, unless you're comparing the 2600 version and the GBA version at the same time, you probably wouldn't notice much of a difference. Pitfall II is a bit slower, but that isn't really surprising since there is another chip to emulate with that game. Chopper Command didn't seem any different than I remember, except for the lack of the Activision logo at the bottom of the screen (I don't think any of the games have the logo, but since it doesn't add anything to the game, and the GBA is a bit short on vertical resolution when compared to the 2600, it's not really missed at all). You can't go wrong with this cart -- considering that you're getting 40+ games for the 2600 in one cart for the GBA that you can play anywhere for $30, I'd say that was one hell of a deal. My memory might be off, but that's only slightly more than just one Activision game back when they first came out.

Well, it's not that the GBA isn't powerful enough to run Pitfall II -- but that it's barely powerful enough to run the 2600 version via emulation. When emulating the 2600, there are sooo many timing issues to deal with, that it takes a lot of CPU time to handle them all. Just about every game that's more advanced than Pong for the 2600 used some kind of trick or two to get more out of that machine. So, emulating it isn't as simple as it would be for other machines. To give you an idea about the complexity of the problem, this is the first complete 2600 emulator for the GBA after 3 years. There was a NES emulator for the GBA in the first year. Both systems used the same CPU, but programmers on the NES didn't have to use as many tricks as the 2600 programmers. And, as a bonus, the GBA's hardware is very similar (and much more advanced) to the NES hardware, so things like sprites and the backgrounds are much easier to handle. Since the 2600 hardware is so unlike the GBA's hardware, everything you see had to be done with code. Another tidbit about the 2600 emu -- as I recall, the slowest PC that can run a 2600 emu at full speed is a 66mhz 486 -- this is running on a 16mhz ARM chip. Big difference speed wise. It also shows that clock speed isn't everything when it comes to computer speed. In the end, this is one hell of a programming feat -- and hearing that it was done in 4 months makes it that much more impressive.

What a way to break into a new platform I hope we get to see this emulator used in some other products (Atari? ) I know you probably don't hear it too often (or even if you do, it doesn't hurt to hear it again), but thanks for your work on this. Definetly the best portable 2600 around

So, the other day, I left my SP in the parking lot and when I came back, it was gone... No, seriously -- try swapping the battery. These things are actually built pretty damn well (except for the hinge), and I'd be really surprised if it was broke. Most likely, it was stolen, and since the battery didn't work, it got dumped in the parking lot. BTW -- unless you're positive it wasn't ripped from a display, you probably don't want to go sending it off to Nintendo for repair. Try the battery, and if that works, you can get them from a number of places -- including store.nintendo.com .

I'm pretty sure that the GBA became profitable very shortly after release -- not so sure on the GameCube, but since they didn't go over the top on chipset design (ala PS2) or features (XBox), the cube is a very cheap piece of equipment to make. It's also, IMO, one of the best consoles ever. The way I look at the PS2 is that because of shoddy design, if you buy one PS2, expect to buy at least one or two more when something like the disc tray breaks. As for the XBox, the selection of games is underwhelming. At least the games that I would buy. And, since I have kids, I would have to worry about one of them dragging it off the shelf and landing on one of the others. The GCN is great -- great 1st party games, great design, and a price that's right. And now with the price drops, Nintendo might have a big hit on their hands. Especially with the saturation level of the PS2, and the lack of titles on the Xbox... BTW -- I do find it funny to hear people bitching about having to buy a game to go with a $99 system instead of having a bundled game with a $180 system.... you can buy a new release game, and another game for the $80 difference. Heck, you could get the GameBoy Player addon and a new release game, and get access to the entire GB/GBC/GBA library as well. Or, you could get a Wavebird wireless joystick and game... geesh, some people will complain about anything...

I'm going to wait until I have the actual cart in hand before making a judgement -- the GBA carts can run at different speeds, and while playing something like Mario or Advance Wars off a flash cart might not make much of a difference, something like this could easily be affected by cart speed. Of course, if everything is loaded into RAM, it wouldn't make any difference at all. For the record, Pitfall II seemed a bit slow to me, but still enjoyable. I almost felt like a kid again, sitting on the couch playing Pitfall II. What I would've done for a portable 2600 20 years ago...

This is great stuff, btw. As soon as I happen to see it in the store, I'll be buying myself a copy (and maybe one for my kid if he wants one too ). Any chance of some more technical details on this emulator? Considering that this is by far the slowest platform I've ever seen a working 2600 emulator on, I'm pretty sure that alot of people are interested in knowing some of the details. One question that came to mind for me was about Bradford Mott -- I know he is responsible for Stella, but as a lot of us on playing around with the GBA know, being able to write a good emulator in C/C++ and being able to write a good emulator for the GBA are two completely different things. Did Bradford already have ARM/GBA experience? I am just soooo impressed by this emulator, and I'm curious to find out more on his background

heh - i very rarely play games to completion. I always seem to get bored with them after a while. But, with MK:DD, it grabbed me in hard. I was able to beat most of the game in a little less than a week -- the only thing I still haven't got is 100cc/150cc all cup mode and the mirror mode (do you get that for the 150cc all cup mode?), but I did manage to get the full 40pts on all the 50cc and 100cc tracks. My only complaint is that it seems a bit easier than the other karts. After 2 years, I still haven't completely beat Mario Kart: Super Circuit, but then again, you can't see the screen unless you have a SP, and the SP's controls are too cramped for something like Mario Kart...