Herbarius

Maybe he didn't mean "failure" in a commercial sense. Like he said "I felt it was not a satisfactory game device."

Sorry, I did not make my point clear. There's nothing ill about it being a digital system, but about Ralph Baers patents, at least some of them. Or, propably there's nothing wrong with the patents at all. However the "infringement" by Atari and others seems to be far-fetched at least. Do you have any link with more information to this court case? What was their reasoning? Considering how many people went to court trying to get rid of the patents and/or their obligation to pay license fees shows there's some moral clash... Okay, you could argue "hey, they just didn't want to pay", however their lawyers would not have pursued the case if they had not thought there was any chance of winning, because if would've only caused additional costs for acchieving nothing.

Sorry, my mistake, I got things wrong here. I wanted to say it didn't have a CPU. Of course it could be digital nonetheless... But I'm glad to hear that it's a common misconception, so I'm not alone EDIT: Interesting read BTW... However I can't help but feel there's something very ill about all this. I'll take a look at the patents and What about today? Do Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo still have to pay license fees to Magnavox, because they're still displaying stuff on a TV screen which can be controlled by the customer? Why don't they have to pay that if Magnavox' claims were legitimate back then? Okay, with the advent of digital TV I could see why it's different, but AFAIK you still connect your X-Box or Playstaion by analog means, maybe digital connection is availabe too, but its optional... Patent issues seem to leave behind this "something's wrong about all this"-feeling quite often... The patent system as a whole may posess some fundamental flaws, however revising it would most likely upset a lot of people who get money from their patents which could be rendered illegitimate by a revision of the system...

Even being completely analog they could have put some more effort in it in some areas. What about two "counters", you know those number wheel thingies, which could be incremented by the electrologic in the system and maybe reset by a button next to it, like you would do on an old style tape deck or Datasette... This could keep score... This propably could have been done, if not, then they wouldn't have been able to let the ball bounce off the players either.

I know that Urban Legend is quite widespread, but I thought at an Atari forum like this everyone would know the difference between "landfill" and "desert".

As that page states, it is different from a regular Atari, however if you are familiar with electronics you'll propably be able to adapt it to your model, and if you are not, you propably shouldn't attempt it anyway (I personally wouldn't, especially because I suck at soldering )

Propably not, because DVD players usually don't have RF input like VCRs. The idea was to use your VCR as RF-to-SCART adapter... (Sounds quite strange to me because I use my video recorder to do the opposite, because my much-too-old TV don't have composite and/or SCART at all - but this could propably work.) Look at this mod: http://www.atariage.com/howto/composite.html You can follow these instructions to replace the antenna cable of the 2600 with Composite output... Adapters for Composite to SCART are propably quite easy to find (although they'll propably be more expensive than you would expect - as it's always the case with adapters)... The PS1 came with such an adapter (at least here in Germany). Propably you'll also have to put in an Y-cable for the audio first, so that both channels at your TV get the mono sound signal. Who did invent the SCART plug anyway? What a stupid idea, did they think people were too dumb to handle 3 color coded plugs so they had to invent this SCART adapter? As far as I understand, SCART is nothing different than composite, just that it's a single, broad plug instead of the three cables. The problem is IMO that SCART plugs are much more sensitive to mechanical stress from plugging and unplugging them and will break sooner or later, especially if you switch devices often. But I guess the companies figured it out themselves as SCART plugs seem to be less popular nowadays while TVs seem to have composite jacks regularly.

In my opinion, the effects demonstrated on the screenshots are too strong (stronger than they appear on a real CRT), but propably they're adjustable... Also it doesn't look like all like the picture on a TV because of the missing scanlines. Like the sky in Enduro would appear as alternating bright blue and dark blue lines if you go close to the TV...

No, the original NES controller ports are different from the VCS and different from the SNES. This is what they looked like

Yes, that's propably true. AFAIK if you want to register a patent you have to be very precise in your description of your product and even submit instructions to construct your device, which is detailled enough that anyone familiar with electronics (in this case, because it's a electronic device) can reproduce it from this instruction. Hence I still wonder why there was no impartial expert of some kind, perhaps some electronics professor or something, who could have told "Despite the superficial similarity, the patent is in no way infringed." Or maybe the patent was worded in such way that superficial similarity is enough to infringe it? Wouldn't that be reason to nullify/reword the patent? Because it's not precise enough to meet the criteria stated above... However, nullifying patents is close to impossible even if you have sufficient evidence, isn't it? Again, flawed patent system

I once saw a similar "pirated" console at a street festival here in Germany. It was called "MasterGames" It had the look of the PS1 (exactly the same, only the logo was different of course) and came with two PS1 controllers lookalikes like your console has, and I think even a light gun. It also had "built in games" but AFAIK those weren't official titles but really crappy stuff (think Action 52). However, if you opened the lid, instead of a CD tray you would find a NES cartridge slot and it would play most NES games. Here you'll find a more detailled review of that console: http://low.audioattack.de/mastergames/index.html However, it's in German. However you can read this translation by Google Babelfish - it's not perfect, but readable.

Perhaps someone has the mercy of moving it to the Classic Gaming Central... My opinion to the review... Well it's very short and most of it is just comparing it to Super Mario Land. Okay, I figure it being a "Minute Review" that it means being just roughly a minute... It is funny, don't get me wrong, and it's also done well. But I don't know the game any better now without playing it, just that it uses tiles from Super Mario Land and similar gameplay... I think a better title would have been "My two cents on GB Popeye 2" instead of "review"...

I watched it too. I'm an AVGN fan, but this review was a little disappointing to me... However, as other people already said it was nice to see the Odyssey 1 in action. I didn't even know the game did not keep score before. Also, I agree on that the review would have been much better if he had done it with Kyle Justin like in the Battletoads review. Also I would have liked some more historical facts, like mentioning the name Ralph Bear and the "Brown Box" prototype. Also, in my opinion seeing it in action sheds some more light on the whole Ralph Baer/Nolan Bushnell Pong debate. Okay, Baer won the lawsuit and Bushnell had to pay a (rather small) licensing fee. But seeing the tennis game in action, knowing it does not keep score and you can move all around, even steer the ball... As Bushnell said "not very clever". I don't see he "ripped of" Bear in any way. Maybe he had some inspiration from the Tennis game, but saying Pong is a ripoff is like saying Chess is a ripoff of Checkers because it uses the same board.

btw I had a similar experience with Xenon 2 for the PC... I remember me and a friend playing it a lot when we were kids. Though we've never beaten it, at least we could get through the first couple of levels... Playing it again nowadays: Holy sh*t, it's hard! I remember I discovered cheats in a magazine back in the day, however this was after I knew the game quite a while, so it's not that we cheated all the time.

But you said it had worked before even using the original NES controllers and all of a sudden the problems kicked it? That's what I got from your first post, sorry if I'm mistaken. I don't know anything particular about the NES hardware, let alone the FC Twin However there propably is some kind of chip that recieves the signals from the controllers so games can "ask" that chip "hey, what buttons is the player pressing?" as to put these button presses into action in the game... If there is something wrong with the chip, it could do unexpected stuff. However, if this was the case, why does it work normally with the Yobo controllers... Because if they're NES-compatible they should send the same signals as the original controllers.

Maybe some chip, either in your controller/s or the Joypad Controller Chip inside the FC Twin, fryed somehow, but in a way that does not stop it from working completely but produces some strange effects. Or maybe there's some unwanted connection between two wires that should be isolated from each other somewhere? Just guesses, though.

I think a crash like in 1983/84 is unlikely to happen because the games industry has much more "substance" today, the companies behind them have more cash to compensate losses (as you know, we've had a lot of fusions of game publishers lately so there's basically 3 huge ass companies which won't go down so easily). Also the market is more diverse, maybe parts may collapse, genres that die out, but I don't think something like 1983 when the gamers like all at the same time lost their trust in video games completely (to exaggerate a little)... However, maybe "video games as an art form" can get better without "video games as an economy" to crash. I like to think that the art form "video game" is currently in a regenerative phase anyway! From an economical point of view the video game market was well off all the time, nothing's wrong, everything is fine... However I think most people on these forums know this wasn't true for the artistic part. Why do I think it is regenerating? 1. This HUGE movement towards casual gaming. A lot of the simpler game styles have returned, on mobile platforms, as Flash games etc. A lot of people who had nothing to do with games suddenly feel attracted to it - because of simple but innovative games that came out. Of course there's one platform that helped this trend like no other.... 2. ....the Wii. To be honest: I don't like the Wii. It's not my style of gaming. However, I acknowledge or even respect the Wii, because it is very innovative, its very INTERACTIVE (that's what games is all about) and there are a lot of people that like it if you look at the sales. Because it will propably continue to sell well a year or two at least, it might even outperform the sales of the classic NES and already is on-par with the SNES. 3. More diversity. The Wii and the clash towards casual gaming doesn't mean the more complex games die out. But they seem to realize that there are people with different tastes and not every game is for every gamer. Grand Theft Auto 4 is really astonishing. To be honest, like it's the case with the Wii, I don't really like Grand Theft Auto either - this hasn't changed with GTA4, as I would have some fun to play it once or a couple of time, but I don't get the long-term motivation and would never buy it for myself. But like the Wii I have huge respect for that game and think "Yeah, THIS is really an accomplishment." However: While there is not really innovation in the game, because everything that's in it has already been in other games, but it's a really well-rounded, highly polished experience. This is evolution, instead of innovation. And this is also needed: Dune 2 was one of the first PC real-time-strategy games. However Starcraft was really that well-rounded, highly polished package, where everything fits together, in my opinion STILL the current peak of RTS evolution. I'm not really happy with this post, but it already is quite long. I'm sure there is stuff I forgot to mention, I think about that alot lately, but its difficult to transform into written form...

I think some value is this: Its a seperate machine from the PC, it goes to the TV. You put the cartridge in, play the game. I've extended the length of the wire of my A2600 controllers so I can sit at the couch, instead of the desk chair... Playing on the Emulator does not get you perfectly out of the "work" mood. Or before going to sleep, maybe when you've some minor insomnia, playing it from bed, just two switches to turn (TV and Atari) and off you go, instead of having to boot the whole PC again... Something else: As I already wrote I'm more willing to emulate more modern consoles like the (S)NES than the Atari 2600. I found out another reason for this, comparing Enduro on Stella and on my real VCS: The limited graphics of the VCS result in huge portions of the screen being the same color. In the emulator, it's really all the same color, which looks dull for some reason. On the TV however, you'll never get a 100% clear image like on the PC, it seems to add more "depth" to the picture... (as long as it's not too strong and you start wiggling your cables around and smacking the Atari until it gets better )

Some TVs can handle them better, if you have multiple TVs, try all of them, see if one does not roll. Also some TVs have controls to (manually) change the vertical hold. If you can do this with yours it might also help, however you'd have to change it back to play NTSC games again.

Okay, this time I kept track of all the games I played, not only Atari games. VCS games are played on real hardware unless stated otherwise. Star Wars Episode III (GB Adv) -- 150 min Played using Emulator, .I just felt an urge to play that game after seeing the movie again... Enduro (VCS) -- 60 min I'm getting better... Quake (PC) -- 40 min Played using the "JoeQuake" engine, which features superior graphics. Battle Isle (PC) -- 40 min Played using the DOSbox Emulator. Actually it was "Data Disk One", I still can't win the very first mission! And the usual stuff... Pac-Man (VCS) -- 30 min Centipede (VCS) -- 30 min Total: 350 min Thats almost 6 hours, but I would've played more if I had more time...

NES Game Genie code tutorial Propably this could help.

Look carefully at the tuning controls at the TV. Any chance you have different controls for "rough tuning" and fine tuning? Maybe you only used the rough controls... When you get the fuzzy picture, you should try the fine tuning to get it better... If that doesn't help, have you tried switching the Channel switch on the back of the ATARI to 3 (or to 2 if you already had it on 3) and try if this works better? It could be a problem with the console though, can you try it with another TV set? What about the TV, does it tune in well to regular TV programs, another console, home computer or a VCR? If you can't manage to get those clear either, it may be a problem with the TV.

Added. Nice, thank you, just voted... BTW, I would choose a cat.

Maybe its because the Emulator compensates for PAL/NTSC differences automatically? Would be my guess...

Nice idea, looks great... However, when I first read the thread title I thought it would be about a small lamp you plug into your Atari 2600 controller port or something like that ^^