DamonicFury

Strangely enough, I neither saw or heard of Mappy back in the 80's, despite hanging out in arcades all the time. That one just must have missed my area (Central Virginia.) So the first time I played it was when it was added to MAME in the late 90's. I did finally see the cabinet and play it during PhillyClassic 4.

These are the VG Pocket systems? Link to older thread about the VG Nice little unit (mine is also the orange one with Space Invaders, Burger Time, and Bust-A-Move.. got it at Toys R US a few years ago.) Can't see how anyone couldn't get 10 bucks worth of fun out of it. :-)

I've found the imagine quality to be pretty poor just using one of these things. It would be interesting to try one on a AV-modded system... I would imagine that would clear up the problem.

I was able to get all four games, however, one Taco Bell I went to had already run out of Asteroids. Thankfully, the one a few miles up the road had it. But it probably would be a good idea to go out and get these before they run out!

A few years back, I bought a Clutch Hitter arcade game for use to be converted to a MAME cabinet. This was done successfully, but I was left with the original 'guts' of the thing. I'm 99% sure the cabinet used to be a Double Dragon. Anyway, here's what I have: 20" arcade monitor, still bolted to a piece of wood from the cabinet. Monitor has some kind of Tic-Tac-Toe burn in, and needs a bit of work (one of the colors was coming in and out intermittently... I think I may have made it worse when I tried to fix it.) :-( JAMMA harness Power supply Clutch Hitter board Paper Clutch Hitter marquee Clutch Hitter manual Any offer will be considered, but you gotta take it all. And there's no way I can ship this stuff, so you'll need to meet me somewhere in the York/Harrisburg area. Hope this stuff is of interest to somebody!

I griped about this problem over a year ago in the "Must Have Shooters" thread (as you noticed, Bounty Bob!) While I'm sorry you've run into this issue, I'm kind of glad to see that I wasn't just going crazy all those years ago! It was one of the most annoying bugs I've ever run into. If a playable ATR shows up, it would be fun to try this game again after all this time.

I didn't notice any cigarette smell. I once got a Lynx from Ebay that REEKED of smoke, so I know what you're talking about! I don't think you missed out on much... the Video Music doesn't work well, the cart changer has a lot of RF interference (it's my second one now, so I suspect the problem exists on all these units), and the game center is missing the top. The rest of the lot that you weren't interested in is fine, though. :-)

Sorry, rmaerz, I ended up with this lot. Didn't see this post until the deal was already done. As it turns out, the prize part of this lot, the Video Music, has some problems. The power cable was clearly hacked at some point in it's history, and with my multimeter currently missing, it's impossible to say if it was done correctly. The original wall wart is long gone, and in it's place, someone wired in a transformer half way between the unit and a generic power plug. I bravely went ahead and tested it anyway... and it kinda works... you get the various graphics to appear, but there's no sound output (there should be sound output to the TV, right?) Also, only the right input seems to work... nothing plugged into the left input seems to have any effect. So this needs some work. At some point, I'll make sure it's getting the correct AC voltage... if I'm very lucky, perhaps that will fix some of the other issues. The rest of the lot is pretty much as it was described. The wireless joysticks are interesting, and seem to work fine. Never had a pair of these before. Also nice to have 20 Sears labeled carts... even if none of them are at all rare, it's a neat addition to my collection. The systems and carts are in reasonably good condition, although no switchboxes were included. So while I'm a bit disappointed about the condition of the Video Music, it's still a nice lot.

It might be worth mentioning that Mass Effect is available for the PC. I've been playing it that way (on a PC that's far from top of the line) and been pretty happy with it. I relate to the idea of there being just one game on the 360 that makes it desirable! But with Mass Effect on the PC, Pac-man Championship Edition now available (and lots of fun!) on the iPhone/iTouch, and most of the levels from Beautiful Katamari ported to Katamari Forever, there's currently nothing exclusive to the 360 that I personally want. I'm not a hater, though... I'm open to the idea of getting one someday IF more interesting exclusive games appear (not a big shooter fan) and Microsoft issues a version that's fully immune to the RROD problem.

I don't have a GBA, but I have played a lot of Rampart on other platforms. During the castle reconstruction phase, you should be able to move a piece of castle wall around the same way you moved the cursor around during the battle. The fire button you used in the battle should drop the piece into place, and the speed-up button used in the battle should rotate the piece. The idea is to completely surround at least one of your castles (more castles = more points and more cannons) so you can proceed to the next battle. Hope this helps!

I complied them from the various catalogs that came with the games. I also checked with the various Sears/Wards catalogs that are available on the web. Adventure IS an odd case, as it appears only in the 1980 game catalogs, but according to the programmer, it was released in '79. ( Interview with Warren Robinett ) Perhaps it was initially released in limited quantities? Should have noted that my source was the catalogs in the original post... sorry! I'm sure they're not considered a definitive source of information, but I think they give us about as good of an idea as we're likely to get about the order of release. As a side note, I find Atari's 1981 four offerings incredibly skimpy. (At least they were all good games!) Perhaps the Activision defections really hurt their output for that year?

All 9 games in the '77 list were available at the system's October launch.

Here's what was released in the first five years. Hope this helps a bit. Lists within each year are in alphabetical order, not order of release. 1977: Air-Sea Battle Basic Math Blackjack Combat Indy 500 Star Ship Street Racer Surround Video Olympics 1978: Basketball Brain Games Breakout Codebreaker Flag Capture Hangman Home Run Hunt & Score Outlaw Slot Racers Space War 1979: Adventure Backgammon Basic Programming Bowling Canyon Bomber Casino Football Home Run Human Cannonball Sky Diver Slot Machine Superman Video Chess 1980: Atari: 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe Championship Soccer Circus Atari Dodge 'Em Golf Maze Craze Night Driver Othello Space Invaders Video Checkers Activision: Boxing Checkers Dragster Fishing Derby 1981: Atari: Asteroids Missile Command Video Pinball Warlords Apollo: Lochjaw Lost Luggage Racquetball Skeet Shoot SpaceChace Space Cavern Activision: Bridge Freeway Ice Hockey Laser Blast Kaboom Skiing Stampede Tennis

Star Wars Missile Command Asteroids Battlezone RoadBlasters

Just got mine today. Worked great with Activision Anthology. Fantastic sticks!

I know this is an old thread, but I figured I might as well post the solution to this issue: Simply go to Program Files->MumboJumbo->Activision Anthology Remix Edition. Double click on the aare icon. That did the trick for me.

How about Missile Command? Sure a few people have mastered it, but most newbie's find it very, very hard to get past 10,000 points. I own the game, put in tons of practice, and have only got to around 150,000. If I'm not 100 percent focused, I'll lose far before then. The souped-up version, Super Missile Attack, should easily be among the very hardest games.

I've recently become addicted to a great iPhone game called Squareball. The graphics are very reminiscent of early 2600 games, featuring just a ball (square, of course) and colored blocks. The game consists simply of scrolling the playfield in a way so that the ball hits all the green blocks. Doing so completes a level, and sends you to a harder one. You lose a life if the ball hits a red block or a hole in the playfield. There are also pink and blue blocks that can be hit for bonus points. The game has that perfect Atari "just one more game" feel to it. Anyone else tried this yet?

Yeah, Time Pilot '84 just isn't that fun. I played it in a 7-11 back when it came out, and managed to almost completely forget about it until MAME came along. Trying it again, I suddenly remembered it... then soon remembered why it was so unmemorable.

Rather than releasing the 5200, perhaps Atari should have either promoted the Atari 400 as a game machine, or released a game console identical to the 400 with a keyboard sold separately. Releasing the 5200 as a non-expandable game machine, with games and controllers that were incompatible with the 400/800 line always seemed like a mistake to me. The Atari computers were incredible game machines, yet Atari seemed unwilling to market them as such, until it was way too late.

I love this site, and would be happy to buy a subscription to support it.

The 5200 itself is fine. The controller buttons are just notoriously flaky. You need to take apart the controller (carefully.) Once done, you should use an eraser on the flexible circuit board where the problematic buttons touch it. This may do the trick, but if not, try gluing bits of foll to the carbon dots on the buttons. Doing this should get you up and running for a while. A more permanent solution is to get new replacements flexible circuits and buttons from Best Electronics. Best website That link also gives some good tips on how to open up the controller without damaging anything.

If you had to pick one year, 1980 would be a good one, not necessarily because it's games were the best (although you could make a case for that), but because it was the first year that a huge variety of great games appeared. Sure, you had Space Invaders in '78, and Asteroids in '79, but in 1980, you suddenly had a huge variety of great games that were unlike anything seen before. You had Pac-man on one end, introducing video games to a HUGE audience that had never been interested in them before. And on the other, you had games like Defender and Missile Command that provided an enormous challenge to players willing to put the time (and the quarters) into them. Slightly off subject, in the realm of home video games, Atari released it's Space Invaders port, which was a true system seller, and Activision started releasing games for the 2600 that started to show it's true potential. Meanwhile, Mattel introduced the Intellivision, featuring home games with better graphics and more complexity that the Atari games of the time. So while I wouldn't say that the games of 1980 were better than the games of 1981, I'd still give the edge to 1980 for being such a groundbreaking year.

As far as I know, Merlin's Walls is the only one. A setup like that might work well for vertical arcade games that scroll horizontally (Scramble / Super Cobra / JumpBug etc.), as it is far easier to do vertical scrolling on the 2600.

Sounds like they're holding off on releasing the Slim (along with an accompanying price drop) until their inventories of the current PS3 are reduced somewhat.