Mezrabad

September 2, 2007

I was a firm believer, and still am, in not mapping the cave, (my character hasn't got a map, so I shouldn't make one)

Now that just doesn't make any sense. I'm quite sure your mapless character, if real, would have mapped his way as he went. Who wouldn't under such circumstances. Even Hansel and Gretel left a trail of bread crumbs to follow.

It's just not normal to want to aimlessly wander around a maze.

You've missed my point, but if you've never played the game, or think I'm refering to the first level, then that's entirely understandable.

I have a map of the first phase of Dragonstomper (without the traps) simply because that phase is "the countryside" and it isn't unreasonable to assume that the character would either have a map or would be making a map. I also reuse that map for subsequent playing (though not generally the first time after not having played in a while).

In Dragonstomper, the "maze" to which I refer and which I resist the mapping of is the cave in the third phase. The cave is pretty much a one-way affair. There's no branching and there's no backtracking. The hazards are pits, darts and invisible traps. To escape from, avoid or detect these hazards one must (but not always) use resources purchased in the village (potions, spell scrolls, equipment). When I say "mapping the cave" I'm refering to keeping track of where all the invisible traps are relative to the skeletons, pits and darts, so that, in a subsequent playing of the game, one can use that map to get through the cave more easily by knowing exactly how to avoid the traps.

To me, it removes a layer of the role-playing and entirely eliminates the challenge to sit there with a map of all the invisible trap locations. Where's the suspense? Where's the tension between using or conserving limited resources when exactly where those resources will be needed is handily referenced? It would be like playing through a modern RPG while someone reads the player directions from a walkthrough.

I hope that clarifies for you what I meant by my original statements.

September 1, 2007

Anthony,

Does your German Odyssey have carts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7?

There's one on ebay (ends Sept 02) and it looks like it only has those (and it could be yours?)

August 26, 2007

I think that his 35-year theory holds well with explaining demand, but it can also explain supply. Parents who kept the consoles that their families didn't play (for whatever reason) will find those items in their attics 30 years later when they move out of their homes to retirement residences. Those items then find their way into yard sales and eBay auctions.

July 2, 2007

Great ads, FND! (yes, I still have to send you the scans of the APF instructions. I haven't forgotten. )

One thing we're overlooking about the RCA Studio II was that a radiation sheilded version of the COSMAC chip was used in the Voyager spacecraft. (Source Here.)

Forgive me for reusing my own material, but immediately after playing the Moonship Battle game I could understand anyone's desire to launch this console into space. (cue rimshot)

July 1, 2007

Lots of the time when you find a few Zellers boxes from an original owner you find a nice little Atari Junior with the lot. Atarimania is king with it's listings. Atariguide has several scans of manuals that aren't anywhere else yet. Atariage has the forums, and a database (but needs a good update). Other good sites are Atariprotos.com, The giant list of Atari 2600 label variations, the PAL cart database, etc. You just need to click the links section at the top of the forum page.

This is all good to know. Thanks for sharing it.

Do you happen to know of any sites devoted similarly to the ColecoVision? I've got a list of ColecoVision titles without dates, too. EDIT (Been checking around some. MobyGames had some years and so did another site which I've immediately forgotten.)

Amazing Bumpman

Cosmic Crisis

Dance Fantasy

Flipper Slipper

Gust Buster

Rolloverture

Sector Alpha

Skiing

Strike it

Super Action Soccer

Super Crossforce

Super Sketch

Tank Wars

Wiz Math, The Wizard of Id's

July 1, 2007

I remember reading a thread a long time ago that the Zellers games came out in stores in '86. As for the rest I would suggest checking Atarimania. Vulture Attack had Novemember? October? 1982 on the instructions IIRC.

WOW, I just took a look at your Zellers collection in your signature link. Nice work. I hope you find the last two boxes!

Thanks for the suggestion of looking over at Atarimania. I didn't even know they existed! They had dates (which, at this point, I'm just going to accept as "good enough") which took care of all but the Zellers stuff and Air Raid. I'm going to go with your date (86) on the Zellers' titles, since, given your collection, I think you're the one most likely to know.

Thanks again.

June 30, 2007

I've been unable to figure out when the games below were released for the Atari 2600. For most of the 2600's games, I was able to find a copyright date (not always the same) on a games box, manual or cart as pictured in Atari Age's database, to give me some date to use to get close to the year released. I was unable to find a clue for most of these games (or if there was one, I missed it.)

If anyone has personal knowledge of when these games were released (Like, "I remember I bought mine at a K-Mart in 1983") or even a receipt with a date on it, I'd appreciate you letting me know by posting in the thread. If I can just get a close idea of when these were available it would help me out. Otherwise I'll have to arbitrarily decide that these games would've been available "by 1984 or so" and just play them in a "not sure" batch. Not a big deal but if I can get it right, I'd like to try. Thanks.

Air Raid

Ghost Manor

Challenge

Condor Attack

Cosmic Corridor

Dishaster

Eli's Ladder

Glacier Patrol

I Want My Mommy

Ikari Warriors

Inca Gold

Montezuma's Revenge

Night Stalker

Ocean City Defender (Atlantis)

Pepsi Invaders

Pinball (Atari Video Pinball)

Quest for Quintana Roo

Space Adventure

Spider Maze

Tank Brigade (Tanks But No Tanks)

Tanks But No Tanks

Time Warp

Universal Chaos (Targ)

Vulture Attack

By the way, this is research for my chronogaming project. (see Atari Age blog (link below) or website, www.chronogamer.com to get an idea of what I'm doing.) I'm about to start chronogaming 1980-1984 and am trying to establish lists of games that came out during each of those years. 1980, 1981 were pretty easy to get a handle on but 1982 gets hairy with lots and lots of third party titles coming out. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

June 26, 2007

One of the coolest aspects of the game is not the jiggle physics

Wait, wait, wait. The jiggle physics may not be the coolest aspect, but they are at least one of the cooler aspects. I mean, c'mon, let's be fair.

Though I noticed that the women in the movie are far more realistically proportioned and won't have the same back problems the characters in the game would someday have--y'know, if they actually aged.

June 22, 2007

Well, come to think of it, I was in Manhattan two weeks ago at the World's Famous Hell's Kitchen Flea Market (at West 39th Street, Between 9th & 10th Ave) and I purchase a German Magnavox Odyssey System which is in Superb Condition, and 100% Complete (and I mean everything, including the Box). Besides the Japanese Bandai Vectrex System (which I purchased at the Salvation Army) I don't have a clue on how much value it has? I bought for $50 Bucks and he was playing the system (so it works) I don't know much about pricing for foreign Consoles, but how much do you guys thinks this is worth??

Anthony...

If I remember correctly what makes the foreign ones interesting is that they don't have the games "States" and "Football" (Instead they have "Soccer", though they probably call it "Football".)

I've bought four Odyssey consoles in various stages of completeness and condition paying between $60 and $130 for them. I would think a foreign one in the condition you describe would fetch over $150, mostly due to the fact it probably has a game which was completely unavailable in the US, Soccer (though it being a European box, it probably calls it "Football") and because it is in such good condition. However, what I am not aware of is the rarity of consoles from different countries. A place you might want to go is www.pong-story.com and nose around there for a while, maybe even e-mailing or pming the owner there. There are some foreign Odysseys that are rarer than others so you'll want to find out if you've got one if you plan on selling it or just want that warm feeling people get when they've made a good deal.

June 22, 2007

Okay, I saw the whole thing in about 20 minutes.

Some nice visuals, mostly having to do with the women.

There is one good schtick in the very beginning involving a bra and then it's all downhill from there.

If there was anything good about the script, it wasn't in the parts I slowed to normal speed to watch.

June 19, 2007

Is anyone interested in meeting up semi-regularly for games here in NW Austin? (near 183 and 620) Now I have two modded Xboxes and only one pair of hands for playing them.

It looks like all my Saturdays next month are open, so I'm open to any suggestions over the next week or so.

Sure, but I dont have an xbox

All my saturdays in July (except for CGE weekend) are pretty free in the afternoons. Let me know when and I'll bring the chips and beer/soda whatever.

June 17, 2007

Actually, it's Gamer Cinema, the quality isn't relevant at all. As gamers we have an obligation to support gamer cinema just like comic book fans have an obligation to support Comic Cinema. Obviously, our job is harder, but c'mon, movies about videogames!!! We're in the mainstream now, all we have to do is to help these movies be successful for another decade or so before their quality improves and then we've got it made!

Look at Science Fiction and how awful old sci-fi films could be, and now they're pretty cool at least 40% of the time. Comic Cinema had to go through some really awful films, too, and they've been making them since the 30s and 40s right? Then, finally, along comes Sin City! Completely worth the wait!!!

Eventually, if we show them there's a market for it, someone is going to make a truly incredible movie based on a game. Until then we have to do our part by renting Super Mario Bros and Silent Hill while going to see Dead or Alive and whatever the next Resident Evil movie is called. By the year 2040 we should have some quality stuff to watch at the nursing home in our virtual reality capsules.

June 5, 2007

One set is supposedly a "goodmerge" whatever that means.

You do realize that some of those "goodsets" include bad dumps, right? If it has a "b" in brackets with a number after it, like [b1], then it's a known bad dump.

Somewhere in one of my threads about roms I posted a key for what all those codes mean in rom dumps.

Tempest

Thanks for that Bruce and Tempest. I actually only knew the "!" meant good dump, but had been uncertain about the a1 or b1's.

It's working now. Y'know, if it hadn't worked at all, I think I would've immediately suspected the microSD, but since some worked and some didn't, I didn't know what to think. Thanks for everyone's patience.

June 1, 2007

I read Pool of Radiance (I also think there was a "Curse of the Azure Bonds" and a few of the other gold boxes written into story form), Betrayal at Krondor, Return to Krondor, Tear of the Gods and Baldur's Gate. The Feist novels were pretty good (no surprise there) but the Pool of Radiance and Baldur's Gate paperbacks were pretty weak.

May 30, 2007

Keep in mind that those are just the roms I was able to download from various places around the net

As Allan noted (and I'll second) all those games work fine - sounds like you have a bunch of bad/modified dumps.

One set is supposedly a "goodmerge" whatever that means.

You have 238 of 238 known Mattel Intellivision ROMS (V2.03)

GoodMerge 3.1.1821.32159 - 1/01/06 11:03:23 PM

Did you get all of your roms from the Intellivision Lives!/Rocks! discs?

May 30, 2007

I am waiting for my CC3

wow thats a lot of roms that doesnt work

hope we will find a solution...

Keep in mind that those are just the roms I was able to download from various places around the net and were not taken off of the Intellivision Lives/Rocks discs as recommended by the maker of the CC3. I just don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm dissing the CC3 in any way, shape or form.

May 29, 2007

UPDATE: Chad was EXTREMELY helpful and Now I know exactly what the problem was. My "new" microSD card (chip?) appeared to be formatted FAT, and let me write things to it and let me copy things from it, but "FAT" must not have been FAT16 or FAT32 because only some of the games would run. Chad sent me another CC3 today on which I used the same microSD and all supposedly "good" roms and I got the same result as I had been getting. Realizing, the problem absolutely HAD to be on my end at this point. I reformatted my SD with FAT 32 copied the directory over again and now everything works. So, yeah, I'm really embarrassed.

So, for the record, what works and what doesn't?

Well, the titles in GREEN work and the titles in RED don't (notice there are no longer any titles in RED).

Backgammon

Armor Battle (Fast)

Astrosmash

Auto Racing

Boxing

Carnival

Checkers

Donkey Kong

Dragonfire

Electric Company -- Word Fun

Empire Strikes Back

Frog Bog

Frogger

Happy Trails

Horse Racing

Baseball

Electric Company -- Math Fun

Mousetrap

Soccer

Basketball

Football

Hockey

Night Stalker

Bowling

Golf

Pitfall

Poker & Blackjack

Reversi

Roulette

Sea Battle

Sharp Shot

Snafu

Space Armada

Space Battle

Space Hawk

Stampede

Star Strike

TRON -- Deadly Disks

Tennis

Triple Action

Skiing

Utopia

Worm Whomper

AD&D - Cloudy Mountain

AD&D Treasure of Tarmin

Atlantis

B17 Bomber

Beamrider

Beauty and the Beast

Blockade Runner

Bomb Squad

Bump 'n' Jump

Burgertime

Buzz Bombers

Championship Tennis

Commando

Congo Bongo

Defender

Demon Attack

Dig Dug

Diner

Donkey Kong Jr.

Dracula

Dreadnaught Factor

Fathom

Hover Force

Ice Trek

Kool Aid Man

Ladybug

Learning Fun 1 & 2

Lock 'n' Chase

Loco-Motion

Maze-a-Tron

Microsurgeon

Mission X

Motocross

Nova Blast

Pac-Man (Atarisoft)

Pinball

Pole Position

Popeye

Power of He-Man

Q-Bert

River Raid

Royal Dealer

Safecracker

Sewer Sam

Shark! Shark!

Tron Solar Sailor

Space Spartans

Spiker Super Pro Vollyball

Stadium Mud Buggies

Sub Hunt

Super cobra

Slam Dunk SP Basketball

Super Pro Decathlon

Super Pro Football

Chips Shot Super Pro Golf

Slap Shot Super Pro Hockey

Mountain Madness Super Pro Skiing

Body Slam Super Pro Wrestling

Swords & Serpents

Thin Ice

Thunder Castle

Tower of Doom

Triple Challenge

Tropical Trouble

Truckin'

Turbo

Tutankham

USCF Chess

Vectron

Venture

White Water

World Cup Football (Soccer)

Zaxxon

May 29, 2007

Is there anyway to rip the INTV roms from an Intellivision Lives for the Playstation 2 for use with the Cuttle Cart 3?

May 19, 2007

Normally, I would agree to an extent, but MS implimented a replacement disc program so there is no need to fall back on that excuse now. And if we were all to be really honest, in all the cd/dvd games we have purchased over the years, I doubt any of us have needed a backup even once because the origianl has become totally unuseable.

To be honest, since you're implying that isn't something some of us are being, this just happened to me. My Morrowind disc has tiny, hard to see spiral scratches on it, which seem to be the result of its frequent booting in my Xbox (The Scary Thing, is that the same thing is proabably happening to all of my Xbox titles). I didn't notice the very-hard-to-see scratches until one day it wouldn't boot (text screen of death). The DVD drive still works (reads other disks) just this disk (which has gotten the most use) stops working.

I take it to a local gameshop, they polish it for about 15 seconds (no charge, because the guy couldn't see that he'd made a difference) and now it boots. Because my Xbox is modded, I am able to copy it to my hard disk and from now on I play it from there. If I didn't have a modded box, my copy of Morrowind would eventually become a coaster again because the very device on which it is designed to be used has been slowly damaging it apparently due to me actually playing it frequently.

Why should I choose to deal with a replacement disc program when being able to copy the DVD/CD to the hard disk saves wear and tear on the CD/DVD and obviates my need for that program? I'm thinking about upgrading my Xbox hard disk to a larger size so I can do this for all my Xbox Games. Not only will the DVD's stay in better condition, but Morrowind, for instance, actually loads a hell of a lot faster from the hard drive.

I'm using my modded Xbox to play games I already own off the hard drive because it saves on wear and tear and it improves loading times. I also use it to watch DVDs from any region in progressive scan. I'm no pirate.

So, they won't let me play on Xbox live. Boo hoo. I don't feel I'm missing out on much. What pisses me off is by having a modded xbox, they can classify my as some kind of DMCA scoff-law.

May 17, 2007

Just noticed this thread lovin' on the Astrocade.

Anyone notice how good the sound is on this thing for the time or is it just me? The bass tones just seem nicer and richer than any other system to date, and games like Football actually have melodies in them!

I also got the 8bitdomain multi cart and it was well worth it. Still thinking about the S-Video mod.

May 1, 2007

RCA Studio II - definitely belongs on the list. This console was obsolete the moment it hit the retail shelves as it actually came out about four months after the Fairchild Channel F. The only decent game is Reverse. Fun fact though: One of the main chips in this thing was used on the Voyager probes. (COSMAC? I forget.) Which is funny because while playing the games on this thing I wanted to blast it into space, too.

Magnavox Odyssey II - Gotta disagree with this one. There are some real fun titles on this system, despite the graphics. Understanding the innovation that was the Channel F, I'd still have to rate this system more enjoyable than that, though I'm not saying the Channel F needs to be in there, either. KC Munchkin alone is enough to keep the O^2 out of the bottom 10, not to mention Quest for the Rings and Computer Intro.

Arcadia 2001 - I'm going to lean toward putting this one in the bottom 10. The controllers are iffy (despite being slightly innovative with their little joystick pegs). The games which I've managed to play to test mine look pretty awful. I'll have to give it some further playtime, but thus far I'm not impressed. At the very least, I'd say it was worse than the Jag and 32x.

Adventurevision - Sure, it's collectible, but that's because hardly anyone bought it when it came out. There are only four titles for it and to get the system now would set you back at least a grand, if I'm not mistaken. Being exceedingly rare only makes it more annoying.

April 26, 2007

PM Sent

April 12, 2007

I would be very interested in something similar but with Chess, and across platforms. For example, have a little tournament pitting Atari Chess against Odyssey2 Chess, or Intellivision Chess. A new twist on the console wars.

Atari Chess vs. Saba Chess

I chronogamed something like this a couple of weeks ago, though I was not nearly as complete in my exploration of the abilities of each program as toymailman has been. I also noticed that I called it Atari vs. Fairchild when, technically, it was Atari vs. Saba. (Fairchild didn't release a chess program for the Channel F in the US but Saba did in Europe.) So, color me a little ashamed.

Anyway, cool idea!

March 23, 2007

I've got all of the 3D GTA's on my PS2 up to now except for Vice City Stories, I'll probably end up getting it when I next go to town.

I've just recently started playing through San Andreas. Are the PS2 "Stories" better, not as good or about the same as that?

I guess I'm really looking forward to knowing that IV will be out there and waiting for me to get around to playing, but I guess I'm not in a hurry.

March 21, 2007

Did you get your CFTI with the optional 32K SRAM installed?

Yes. I went with that and the power supply.

I got a card reader from Office Max, company name Digital Concepts item #CR-10M $10. Works just fine. The Imagemate 12 in 1 probably would've worked, too, but it was $40!

The trouble with my printer not reading the CF is that it's designed to function as a stand alone photo printer. You put in a card, it reads it and prints out the pictures. If it can't read the card, it doesn't even bother letting the attached computer know that there's anything in there.

Anyway, very cool gadget. Now I've got to get Tunnels of Doom up and running using it.

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