DamonicFury

Very sorry, but that came in a bit late. (Wouldn’t have changed the standings though.)

You are absolutely correct about this being a flaw in this particular game. I reported this finding to zylon five years ago and she made a ruling on this we’ll use again here: “ATTN: No score pumping by purposely missing the mothership. This enables a player to reach high scores without advancing far into the difficulty levels. The occasional miss will happen, but don't overdo it guys.”

Poll closes Sunday, August 18th, 2019 @9pm EST

Welcome to round fifteen of this 5200 HSC season! Buck Rogers won the poll by two votes. Play using the default settings. Emulation is fine, as are custom controls. Pics preferred, but not required except for HSC wins and records. The current record was set by sdamon - 259,397 points. Bust it if you can for a bonus point. The ROM and manual can be found here: https://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=612 Round ends Sunday, August 18th, 2019 @9pm EST Standings: eegt97 - 334,268 - RECORD BREAKER Nuclear Pacman - 312,265 - RECORD BREAKER jblenkle - 225,755 Cafeman - 179,913 AverageSoftware - 115,385 roadrunner - 73,685 Mangia-Boy - 35,368

Final standings: Nuclear Pacman - 254,840 - RECORD BREAKER! 11 +1 = 12 eegt97 - 58,190 - 10 Cafeman - 52,800 - 9 S.BAZ - 46,150 - 8 roadrunner - 25,090 - 7 Mangia-Boy - 15,590 - 6 jblenkle - 11,960  - 5 bemis - 4,350  - 4 Congratulations to Nuclear Pacman for donning his cape and swallowing the most fruits, energizers, and ghosts! (fwiw, I also like this port... certainly much better than the C64 version I tried recently.) Hope to see you all back to try Buck Rogers, coming up next.

Buck wins!

Pretty sure the original concept can be credited to Atari's 1978 arcade game, Avalanche... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalanche_(video_game)

There was an attempt a number of years ago to gather them all together...

I wouldn't recommend it. Not that I think harming it is particularly likely, but I do know that cleaning the problematic fire button contacts requires some friction as well as a cleaning agent. (But gentle friction... too much can damage the contacts on some of the more fragile circuits.) And if you'd like the good connectivity to last a while, something needs to be done about the crummy black dots that Atari used on the interior of those fire buttons. Plenty of folks here will swear by replacing them with fire buttons with gold contacts from Best Electronics. I think most of those people also replace the underlying thin circuit. I don't doubt for a second that works, but it's obviously a bit pricy... but it may well be worth it for someone looking for a permanent solution. Gluing bits of aluminum foil to the original contacts also works, but the glue can wear off depending on what kind you use, and if using the original circuits, those will still need periodic cleaning.

We've had a run of rarities and prototypes lately... let's try some of the more common titles. Poll closes Sunday, August 4th, 2019 @9pm EST

76,570 Please deduct a point for my use of the Wico.

Yay, a new case FINALLY! Assuming it still runs Stella and has an SD card slot, it might just possibly be time to finally upgrade the old Flashback 2!

The Wico works fine with Centipede (if not as well as with a TrakBall admittedly!) Is his controller seeming to "pull" in one direction? If so, that's probably something that needs adjusted in the console itself.

The game just keeps going and going, like the arcade game it is based on. I've gotten over 100k points at it, but some dedicated soul once got 11 million! https://atariage.com/forums/topic/272745-5200-oe-hsc-season-5-round-2-star-wars-the-arcade-game/?tab=comments#comment-3903734 As for the game itself... the other commenters are dead on... it really pales compared to its super-exciting arcade parent. But jaybird3rd is right as well that on it's own mertis, taken as another 5200 game, it's not a bad game. But if you get good enough to get to the point where the difficulty plateaus, there's little reason to go back to it. It never gets anywhere near as challenging as the arcade game.

Welcome to round fourteen of this 5200 HSC season! Super Pac-man won the poll by a single vote. Play using the default settings. Emulation is fine, as are custom controls. Pics preferred, but not required except for HSC wins and records. The current record was set by Chris-in-NJ - 150,590 points. Bust it if you can for a bonus point. The ROM can be found here: https://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=778 Round ends Sunday, August 4th, 2019 @9pm EST Standings: Nuclear Pacman - 254,840 - RECORD BREAKER! Cafeman - 52,800 S.BAZ - 46,150 eegt97 - 42,870 roadrunner - 25,090 Mangia-Boy - 15,590 jblenkle - 11,960 bemis - 4,350

Super Pac-man coming up next.

Congratulations to eegt97 for spraying the most Sinibombs at Sinistar! Super Pac-man is coming up next. Final Standings: eegt97 - 118,770 +11 S.BAZ - 32,550 +10 roadrunner - 25,710 +9 jblenkle - 24,450  +8 Mangia-Boy: 19,450 +7 Nuclear Pacman - 10,650  +6

Welcome aboard! Glad you're enjoying Sinistar, even using keyboard controls. (I played MAME games that way for years in the early days!)

Poll closes July 21st at 9pm.

With the cost of repair to the original motherboard, yoke, and monitor terrifyingly high, one has to wonder if this might be an acceptable replacement for an original stand-up unit. Yeah, I know it won't be nearly as large and sturdy, the vectors won't be as bright, and it won't retain that perfect sense of nostalgia, but it should be significantly easier to maintain, and thanks to the yoke controller and near-perfect emulation, it should still largely have much of the original enjoyment. Most of all, there won't be that moment of dread and terror every time you turn it on, fearing that something hyper-expensive will fail!

Welcome to round thirteen of this 5200 HSC season! Sinistar won the poll by two votes. Play using the default settings - Survivor Level / 3 Ships / Auto or Manual Shooting (your choice) Emulation is fine, as are custom controls. Pics preferred, but not required except for HSC wins and records. The current record was set by sdamon (Who’s that?!) - 284,970 points. Bust it if you can (if you must) for a bonus point. The ROM can be found here: Round ends Sunday, July 21st, 2019 @9pm EST Standings: eegt97 - 118,770 S.BAZ - 32,550 roadrunner - 25,710 jblenkle - 24,450 Mangia-Boy: 19,450 Nuclear Pacman - 10,650

Sinistar wins the poll!

Congratulations to eegt97 for blowing away far more Death Stars than Luke Skywalker and Lando Calrissian combined! Apologies to those who didn’t enjoy the game. Really hope Sinistar is more to everyone’s tastes as that’s coming up next. eegt97 - 37,046 +11 Cafeman - 26,081 +10 jblenkle - 4,444 +9 bemis - 2,056 +8 Mangia-Boy - 50 +7

Still wasn’t out of the woods with this one... many keys weren’t working, and the picture, while fine with RF, was awful with a monitor. Key problems were fixed with a disassembly and cleaning. But I had no clue how to fix the monitor issue. So I moved the working VIC-II to another motherboard. That fixed the monitor issue, but now the sound was mostly missing and paddles didn’t work. Swapped the Sid chip and finally all was well. (Still need to try two untested 1541s... fingers crossed!) Update: One of the 1541's worked great after a head cleaning. Playing a number of games now! (Also got a huge pile of disks in this lot, and I'm finding that most of the original games work great, but most of the cracked copy disks do not. Not especially surprising!)

Poll closes Sunday, July 7th, 2019 @9pm EST