DamonicFury

How about Turbo? That was a pretty great game for it's day.

It's really hard to get my wife to play any console game, but she really loved Elebits. I did too!

That doesnt make sense? Werent DK, Zaxxon, etc available on the 2600 too? Yes, games like Donkey Kong and Zaxxon were released by Coleco on the 2600, but they were released at the same time, or slightly after, the Colecovision versions. And, like I said above, they were generally poor ports. My point was that as a 1982 Atari 2600 owner, you had a choice between getting a 5200 and re-purchasing games you already had, or getting a Colecovision and having access to a new library of titles.

Something that shouldn't be discounted about the failure of the 5200 was the lack of new and different games. As a 2600 kid back in the 80's, I really wasn't all that interested in the 5200... Missile Command? Breakout? Space Invaders? Yawn! I could play good versions of those on the 2600! But Colecovision... Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, Venture, Ladybug, Cosmic Avenger, etc. It was a whole new set of games with great graphics that either had no 2600 port or a very poor one. Had Atari worked early on to acquire some new properties, that would have helped. I suspect Coleco and it's library caught them by suprise, though... I remember early press about the 5200 in which it was clear Atari was trying to compete with Mattel's Intellivision, not the Colecovision.

As someone who has been ordering AtariAge carts for years, who recently received one of the long-awaited holiday order packages (which was fantastic!), and who is on the Actionauts waiting list, I can wholeheartedly recommend that Al should be given the task of building these carts. The quality of his cart releases far surpasses what anyone else is doing. Yes, there can be a wait because his is a small operation, but the final product is well worth it!

I never saw this game back in the 80's despite being a HUGE fan of the Star Wars vector game. I became aware of it's existence when a friend showed me the port of it running on his Amiga (this was around 1992.) A few years later, I saw the actual game for the first (and so far, only) time at a Videotopia exhibit. In the years since then, I've played it a bit in MAME, but like the original Star Wars, it just doesn't control all that well with a mouse. Last year, I finally picked up a real Star Wars machine, and soon after a ESB multigame from Mark Spaeth (Looking at multigame.com, it seems that Clay is out of the multigame business) It's mighty nice to be able to play ESB the way it was intended! That said, it doesn't quite offer the same thrill as the original Star Wars game.

I'll post a contrary opinion here... go for an Atari computer instead... either the 800 or the 800XL. There are very few games that you can play on a 5200 that you can't play on a 800/800XL. And there are literally hundred of games for the computers that aren't available on the 5200. The computers use good old 2600 joysticks, so no problems there. It's fairly cheap to aquire a SIO2PC cable, which will allow you to easily download any 8-bit software and try it out for free on the original hardware. I've owned Atari computers since the 80's and just been incredibly pleased with them. They're terribly underrated as a classic gaming platform.

Kaboom! stands out for me as a game I didn't have back in the day. Didn't want it either... it looked kind of pointless when I saw it in the Activision catalogs. In hindsight, I missed out on of the 2600 premier games until around 1995! I guess it's just a game you just have to play to find out what's so great about it.

80's arcade games are the best. What a wonderfully unique time in which just about everyone was putting quarters into these things! My top five: 1. Star Wars 2. Missile Command 3. Pac-Man 4. Robotron: 2084 5. Donkey Kong Much to my wife's chagrin, I actually have my top two. And a MAME cabinet that plays the other three very well, as well as hundreds of others. :-)

I played Autoduel a lot on the Atari way back in the day. I loved the concept so much... enough to ignore the incredibly long disk load times, the almost complete lack of sound, the annoyance of always keeping a backup disk in case of death, etc. The thrill of going on missions, winning arena duels, gambling in Atlantic city, upgrading my vehicle, and seeing my reputation climb kept me coming back again and again. It's amazing to me that a game hasn't come along yet to take the good parts of Autoduels and combine them with a great 3D combat engine. I enjoyed I76 a lot, but it didn't have the great open-ended gameplay that Autoduel did. Best of luck in trying to create a modern version... it's long overdue!

To be fair, games on the NES were a lot more "irritatingly impossible" then 2600 games. Sure the 2600 has a few, like those cursed Swordquest games, but they tend to be so bad that very few people would want to beat them. I had a real problem with the NES back in the day... you had to have insanely good reflexes AND play the games a million times in order to do well at it. I was happy to stick to the 2600 and Atari computers during that period! SNES and Sega games had the same problem. It was a massive relief for me when the PlayStation came along and games other than insanely hard platformers became popular again.

It's OK. Plays a decent version of Breakout, but the Pinball game is pretty weak. I got mine for $20 at a yard sale... I don't think it's worth any more than that.

Having MAJOR trouble with Raining Blood, and Number of the Beast on Expert. These are seriously tough. (Forget about TTFAF... that just isn't going to happen for me!)

Just got the "5200 Game Blast" cart, and it's pretty great! It contains the 5200-exclusive games (Countermeasure, Defender, Space Dungeon, Berzerk,Kangaroo,Vanguard) the games that were re-made for the 5200 (Dig-Dug, Centipede, Qix) and several 5200 prototypes (Jr. Pacman, Super Pacman, Last Starfighter,Stargate). 20 games total. For those of us who have an Atari computer, but no 5200, this is a great multi-cart to have!!! I'd wanted one for a while, but it took the announcement of the closing to finally motivate me to get one. I'd recommend getting one for yourself before Mark stops making these!

Got the boxed Porky's today... what a great prize! Thanks so much, user42! Keep up the scanning everyone... it'd sure be nice to complete our shared online collection!

1) I don't believe that is possible to use the 360 Explorer on the PS2 or PS3. 2) You can use a standard PS2-to-USB adapter to play Guitar Hero PS2 games on the PS3, but you won't be able to use hammer-on's or pull-off's. Also, according to Wikipedia the 2.0 PS3 firmware disallows the playing of any PS2 Guitar Hero game. I don't own a PS3, but I've come across this info several times when reading GH-related articles.

I'll be helping Mike out with this.

This is called "Pac-man Gold Edition". They're on sale at Target for $10 this week. Just picked one up and tried it out today. It's probably the best one yet... 8 games, all pretty good ports. High-score saving is included. Dig-Dug is definitely improved from it's first release... it's music sounds right now, the flowers at the top are present, and the playfield scrolls just a bit so the whole thing is included. The joystick is a 4-way which is great for 7 of the games, but perhaps not so hot for Bosconian, which used a 8-way. It's still quite playable, but you'll probably notice the issue. The button on this thing looks and feels like an arcade button... nice touch. I know these things have a bad rep, but if you've been waiting to get one of these, this is probably the one you want... it combines the first Pac-man stick with last year's Super Pac-man, and for this week, is available at a great price.

Wow, didn't expect to win, but major thanks to user42!!! Hope the scans helped him and anyone else... should I ever find more, I'll be happy to scan them in as well.

A big reason certain games don't get released is because of licensing conflicts. For example: Jr. Pac-man - created by Midway, but without Namco's permission, who holds the rights to all Pac-man related games. Gorf - Created by Midway, but has a Space Invaders stage (Taito) and a Galaxian stage (Namco.) Games based on a movie, such as Tron, Star Wars, Krull, etc. These do see occasional release as bonus features of games based on the same movie, but almost never are included in compilations. And of course, there's numerous games made by smaller companies (Exidy, Cinematronics, Universal, Stern) that probably just feel that they wouldn't make much profit by releasing their games in a compilation. Unfortunately, they may well be right. I really hoped the StarRoms model of selling individual games for use in emulators would have been successful, and these smaller companies would have signed on, but sadly that didn't happen.

You would really think so, but apparently that's not the case... ...while the PS3 is backward compatible and can technically run the first two PS2 Guitar Hero games, the new PS3 Les Paul controller won't work with those games.

PS2 vs Wii is a tough call for GHIII. If you had to pick only one system for all your GH needs, I'd go with the PS2, so you can play all 4 GH games. Nonetheless, despite owning two guitars and the previous three games for the PS2, I'm going to get GHIII for the Wii. The new guitar sounds sweet (it'll be my first wireless one,) playing online sounds like a lot of fun, and the possibility of new downloadable songs in the future clinches the deal. If I wasn't such a huge Guitar Hero fan, these things might not be worth the extra $$$, but what I can say.... I absolutely love Guitar Hero. Now I just have to hope they make a Wii version of Rock band... I'd hate to buy the PS2 version of that, only to have the expensive peripherals not work with future Wii versions!!

Here's the manuals for Mogul Maniac, Xenophobe, Radar Lock, and Star Trek. Along with the Guardian manual I uploaded earlier, that's all the manuals I have from your list. mogul1.zip mogul2.zip xenophobe1.zip startrek2.zip startrek1.zip xenophobe2.zip radarlock1.zip radarlock2.zip radarlock3.zip

It's a pretty tough platform game. I found the setting, control, and graphics to be quite good for a Lynx platformer, but the high degree of difficulty stopped me playing it after a few hours. But that's nothing unusual for me... I rarely have the patience to do well at 1990's platform games.

Here's a scan of the Guardian manual: guardian.zip