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A little more variety for me this week.. 2600 River Raid (emulated) - 5 min (I need to mess around with this one more... do your shots always follow your plane or is there a way to make them go straight regardless of how you're moving? I thought there was... anyway, I used to be good at this game, but now it's just a fun bit of nostalgia on occasion. Oh well...) 7800 Dig Dug (emulated) - 25 min (The latest Battle of the Ports made me want to go play some Dig Dug. I couldn't get the mame arcade one to work, but I had this one downloaded. Man is it tough. I had a lot of fun, though. Always kinda had trouble with the control on Dig Dug, though since it will only go in a direction based on a grid... like you can up here or here, but not a little in between... also always had trouble juggling more than one bad guy at a time.) NES Gradius (emulated) - 5 min (Wow... lol... the game has a reputation for being difficult... I need practice, but probably won't get it.) Genesis Monster World IV (emulated) - 60 min (Played this a little more... almost through the "Stream Sanctuary" I think... gotta keep filling some bucket and putting out campfires. Doing this mostly without a walkthrough, so getting lost some here and there, but it's mostly linear. Still enjoying it quite a bit.) Vapor Trail (emulated) - 8 min (I need to play this one more. Think what I really need to do is hook my laptop (which is running the emulation) to my TV via HDMI and play it there. There was less lag that way. Whether that will improve my game any remains to be seen. lol)

Just in case anyone wants to time travel back to the 90s... I scanned in my TurboZoneDirect mail order catalog. Enjoy!

Yeah... I'd play much more Intellivision if the controllers weren't how they are... hate that disc and the side buttons are just so hard to press (although that could be due to age?... the system's, not mine) Yeah, it's difficult to get a Saturn emulator to work like you want, but it can be done... For the Jag, though, I still haven't found one that works enough for me to want to fight it. And I had to do that with my original playstation back in the day... don't remember how I figured out that it would still work if I did that... Yes! As for my own gripes... TurboGrafx-16 - I hate how much the single controller port annoys other people. It doesn't bother me. Seems like any time the system is mentioned that topic is required to come up. Dreamcast - The controllers just aren't that comfortable to me. I've mentioned it before, but the hand grips on the back are pretty close to parallel and it feels unnatural compared to the angled out grips of, say, the Playstation or XBox. Also, I gave up on putting batteries in my VMUs a long time ago... Saturn - Why is my battery dead again? I need to play it more I guess... Other than that, love the system. Just wish it had more games... and they were cheaper... Jaguar - First, the number pad thing is just a bad idea imo. But second, I wish there were more (any) aftermarket controllers... some joysticks or controllers with auto fire or spinners... I know there are some modded controllers out there, but I wish there were some that were made that way originally... Also, a dust cover to protect the cartridge port. I've gotten to where I just leave a cartridge inthe system so it doesn't get dusty in there. Tired of red screens. PSP - Wish it would connect to a WPA2 secured wifi. I think later models will, but mine won't. Sega Master System - Pause button on the console? No separate start button on the controller? Maybe I'm just used to the NES controllers.

Also not up on Super Famicom carts at all... but some have screws on front and some don't... is that a tell of any kind?

I feel like I just recently saw one of those clocks, but it was Princess Peach... on a kart...? Don't remember if it was on here or another site...

Okay, looked up our cost to get PCBs made. For 200 of our two board sets, it's about $1800. So that means it's about $9 per two board set. Add that to the $97.36 population cost and it comes to about $106.36 for fully made boards. Again, completely different applications and whatever, but there's an idea of our costs.

It did make me wonder... my company has some pcbs made by a local company and then populated by another. I can't imagine that these are that much more expensive, but I don't know what exactly is in them. I don't remember the cost on getting the boards printed, but I think the population of them cost around ten grand for 100 boards. I can check again tomorrow (I'm in purchasing, so it's easy for me to look up ). I mean, it's not exactly apples to apples, but it's not too far off I'd imagine... Edit: Just looked back in my work emails and yeah, there's two boards in our order. Certainly different components ... but for the two boards, it costs $97.36 per two board set... so 100 of them is just under 10 grand. Like I said, I will check to see what we pay to get the boards printed in the first place. If they have someone in their organization that can do it themselves, then their costs may be lower, too... Then it also depends on batch size, as the per board cost will go down with larger quantities...

I haven't played either version in years, but back in the day, I remember renting the Tengen Tetris and preferring it over the Nintendo one... but it seems many people have just the opposite preference. I don't remember now why I liked the Tengen one better... I just remember liking it better... /shrug

CU Podcast's take on the Modern Mallard

Haven't had any issues like the arthritis or pain yet. Guess I'm lucky... or maybe I need to play more? Anyway, I have had issue with just the opposite... numbness. If I sit a certain way (or lay a certain way in the case of handhelds) then I start getting numbness in my hands. It starts on the pinkies then slowly spreads toward the the thumbs. I just pause and set the controller down for a minute and stretch my arms out and work my hands for a bit and it goes away. But that's it. Maybe I'm lucky?

Just more golf for me... PSP Hot Shots Golf Open Tee - 180 min (I've completed several more challenges and went up a rank, but still haven't figured out how to open up new courses to play. I'm still having a lot of fun even with the one course. The bad thing is, there are tips that come up on the loading screens, but since mine is a... erm... non-physical copy... erm... ahem... the loading screens go by so quickly that I don't have time to read the tips. I've unlocked different kinds of shots and I've seen the NPC players do special shots, but I have no idea how they do them. Oh well, I'm still winning. =) )

Only a couple of classic games for me this week... Jaguar Raiden - 25 min (I don't like the music in this version as much as in the TurboGrafx version, but I was still humming it for days afterwards. /shrug I'll always lament the lack of a turbo fire/auto fire button on the Jag controller. If this had one, I'd be playing so much more of it.) Genesis Monster World IV (emulated) - 207 min (I've had this one downloaded for a while but never started on it. It really is a great game. The graphics and gameplay are pretty awesome. Beautiful colors and some fun and challenging platforming. The music and sound effects are okay, but nothing too exciting. Looking online, there are some English translated hacks or whatever for around $50, but the original Japanese one is closer to $150 or $200. It was never released outside of Japan. We missed out.)

Flojomojo reminded me of a few... Open a tomb that been sealed for hundreds of years and find bullets for your gun. Break open a wall in an evil castle to find a tasty roast chicken. Catching bombs in a basket? Totally safe. That thing in front of your spaceship? Completely indestructible. Your spaceship? One scratch and it blows up.

I'm sure there are lots of examples of this... can only think of a couple right now, though... Explosives in games where you can stand just a few feet away and are unharmed (like in HERO for the 2600 for example). One that I've seen on Reddit a lot was in Fallout games (and I'm sure there are others) you can almost die from drowning, then drink water to regain health.

I know it doesn't necessarily follow the rules, and it's more personal preference than anything, but I like Mario Bros on the 7800 better than Mario Bros on the NES.

I like sodas and soft drinks and stuff... I prefer Pepsi over Coke. Dr Pepper is my favorite, though. I remember when they used to have yellow caps every once in a while and you could win a free one. Specifically back when I was in middle school, so around the late 80s. I'd get one, buy it, open it, and if I won, immediately go get another one. These days, a yellow cap just says something like 23XM5U7 under it or whatever... sigh... IBC Root Beer was also a favorite around that time. Especially because it looked like a beer bottle. My best friend and I used to buy them and then ride our bikes around town thinking we'd fool someone into thinking we were two minors going around drinking beer. This was also the time for Jolt! cola. All the sugar and twice the caffeine! It was like one of the first super powered energy drinks or something. Had one around a year ago when I found it in the local Dollar General. Drank it late while playing video games and stayed up until like 3 or 4. Such nostalgia! Anyone drink Yoohoo? I used to, but haven't had it in a long time. It was really like watered down chocolate milk or something... thinking about it now, I don't think I'd like it. But I used to really enjoy it.

When I got married, I didn't get any of my groom's cake. Everyone assumed that I already got a piece. I mean, the wedding cake was nice, but the groom's cake was chocolate...

Johnny Tubbo

Ha! You underestimate my capacity for chocolate!

I like the idea, but I also like chocolate. Can these console shaped chocolates also be actual size?

Not surprising that you haven't played it. It was a Nuon exclusive, I think. I haven't played it either, but did find some videos on YouTube... standard resolution or something.. they're all blurry... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxLdCBJVTNQ

I'm betting Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar will be better than Tempest 4000 on the Ataribox...