DamonicFury

Congrats on the free Dig-Dug! Your monitor symptoms sound a bit like the issue I had with my Missile Command a few months back. (it had a thick black wavy line running down the left side) My problem was fixed by a cap kit. This is a set of capacitors meant for the specific monitor you own. You'll have to remove the monitor, desolder most of the capacitors, and replace them with the ones in the cap kit. The good news is that cap kits are cheap (got mine on Ebay) and not all that hard to install if you have any soldering experience. Good luck!

For those who want a home MAME machine, it's not TOO hard to do it yourself, plus it'll save you lots of $$. Here's how about how much mine cost: Old arcade cabinet (Clutch Hitter conversion): $150 on ebay (This gave me the cabinet, a working coin door, and the controls) A 19" computer monitor: $100 An old 500Mhz computer: (essentially free, as it was an old machine I was no longer using) An I-PAC from ultimarc.com to interface the arcade controls to the computer: $50 Misc: marquee light, speakers, specialized surge supressor, etc: $100 So for about $400, I was able to put together a cabinet that I'm completely happy with. A fancier cabinet with a faster computer and top-of-the-line controls would naturally cost more, but you could possibly even do it for less if you can pick a very cheap dead cabinet. And the process of building it yourself can be a whole lot of fun.

From what I've read here , it seems like it was completed, and installed in test arcades, but apparently never actually released.

First time I've ever seen original Exidy arcade games made available - great job getting those rights! If you were ever interested in making the "Exidy Excitement Pack" available as a seperate product for use on the PC, that would be fantastic! Best of luck with the new venture!

Thanks for the information. It's so hard to tell who owns what when it comes to classic arcade games!

Taito Legends is a steal for that much. Even though I pair $19.99 for it, I still feel like I got my money's worth... especially since the CD-ROM has the ROM files right on it for easy use with your favorite emulator. Really hoping that Taito Legends 2 is still published here in the US, despite the falling prices on the first pack. If not, I may need to import it.

Thanks for the heads up - got one for me, and one for my mom, who also still loves Atari!

Probably the usual Atari-owned properties. The ones that already have a vintage 8-bit game programmed would seem especially likely: Asteroids, Missile Command, Centipede, Millipede, Battlezone, Crystal Castles, Super Breakout, etc. I'm sure there would be some cool surprises, too. Licensing bryan's Castle Crisis as the official port of Warlords would have been awesome if they were able to come to terms with him.

Just tried this for the first time and it's an amazing pice of work! Great job! One small suggestion: the game doesn't seem to start at all using a standard 2600 stick, which is kind of a shame. Can it be changed so that pressing the standard fire button will start the game? Also, the RESET switch doesn't seem to work at all... either for starting the game, or resetting a game in progress. Again, fantastic game!

Are people seeing these regularly? If so, where at? I have yet to come across one.

They are also still missing Space Dungeon (a HUGE personal favorite!), all the Arkanoid games, all the Double Dragon games, and Chase HQ. Hopefully, there will be a Taito Legends 3 that contains the rest of their classics! (And of course, a U.S. release for Legends 2!)

Sacrillege! I wouldn't trade my considerably less-minty Missile Command for anything! (It's become like a member of my family!) True happiness = owning arcade Missile Command! Nirvana = being able to turn it over... (it's a long road to nirvana for someone of my meager gaming skills, but I still have hope!)

Congrats on the first cab! It sounds nearly ideal for a MAME conversion, if you were interested in that.

Konami would be my first choice for a new arcade compliation as well (make mine a PC version, please.) After them, how about Sega? (Zaxxon, Carnival, Congo Bongo, Subroc, Pengo, etc?)

Like Albert, this was one of my first Atari games, and I rather enjoyed it, BUT... From time to time, the screen would flash and then go white, and your ship would become almost impossible to see. Was there some way to avoid this that I never discovered? The game became completely unfun when this would happen.

Sadly, it appears that StarROMS is out of business. Their web site www.starroms.com only has a goodbye message on it. For those who didn't know, they were the one place you could purchase and download legal ROMS for use in MAME. They only were able to reach a deal with Atari/Infogrammes to do so, but they had a nice selection of the classics. Dealing with them was always a pleasure. I'm curious if their downfall is tied into Atari's recent woes. Either way, they will be missed, and I will continue to hope that someday a similar service is made available with a selection of arcade games from many manufacturers. Goodbye, StarROMS.

StarROMS, of course, offers most of the Atari, Inc. (now Infogrammes) games. They briefly offered the Atari Games (Midway) ROM's as well, but pulled them when it was made clear that they were not owned by Infogrammes. Curiously, I, Robot was one of the pulled games. Does that one indeed belong to Midway?

Nice to see you've picked Carnival as the latest recipient of your hacking efforts!!! Any chance of getting music into the game? Carnival is one of Coleco's better arcade conversions, and I can't wait to see what you do with it!

Best single find I've had: Guardian in it's box for 2$ in 1995. It was out a closeout store that was clearing out all of their Atari stock. If I only knew then what new-in-box Atari games would go for ten years later... :-) 2nd best: A loose Chase the Chuckwagon for 1$ at a yard sale (1997)

Looks very nice, but quite pricy. If you can live without the spinner and trackball, either the X-Arcade or HotRod work nicely with MAME for about 1/4 of the cost. X-Arcade HotRod I personally own the HotRod and like it a lot. It's not as configurable at the X-Arcade, but it's a bit cheaper and comes with a very nice collection of legal Capcom arcade games.

As I recall, it does actually have all 3 screens, and it even plays pretty well. But it's kinda ugly, even for a 2600 game.

Here's the breakdown: Hacks: Arcade Asteroids (hack of Asteroids) Adventure II (hack of Adventure) Return to Haunted House (hack of Adventure) Homebrews: Atari Climber (originally Climber 5) Prototypes: Aquaventure Combat 2 Frog Pond Saboteur Save Mary Wizard Brand new games exclusive to the Flashback 2: Arcade Pong Asteroids Deluxe Caverns of Mars Lunar Lander Space Duel Yars' Return All other FB2 games were released for the 2600 in the classic era. However, Fatal Run was PAL-only and Quadrun, as we all know, was extremely rare due to it's exclusive release through the Atari Fan Club.

I know we do this a lot, but what the heck... lists are fun! 1. Atari 2600 (forever the King of Consoles!) 2. Atari 8-bit comptuers (all the fun of the 5200 without the lousy controllers!) 3. Vectrex (so unique and fun!) 4. NES (great library of games, shame about the terrible cartridge connector) 5. Atari 7800 (small but fun library of games)

Obviously any game that can use the standarad Atari controllers can use the Atari trackballs in joystick mode. There's only two games I know of that can use the trackballs in trackball mode: 2600: Thomas Jentzsch's Missile Command hack Atari 8-bit computers: Missile Command Anybody know of any others?

I was all ready to buy this collection for the PC today, only to find out that it's release has been delayed again! EBgames link for PC Namco collection So we're now told it will be out October the 18th.