FlightSuit

Any fans here? I've never owned one, but I've always been fascinated by the system for numerous reasons: a) The combination pistol trigger/joystick/paddle controllers are very cool, and a brilliant design. b) The Astrocade was an underdog, enjoying a much smaller market share than its competitors, despite being a much better system. c) The fact that its built-in, numeric keypad, BASIC cartridge, and ability to save and load programs to tape cassettes enabled dedicated fans to keep gaming alive on the thing long after it was discontinued. d) The fact that arcade ports on the Astrocade were much better than on many other systems. Wizard of Wor and Galaxian come to mind, as well as their Pac Man clone, Muncher. I've only ever played the games using MacMess, but I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for this system, and I've certainly been tempted to splurge and get one on the rare occasions when I've seen complete ones on eBay.

Here's the comment I just posted on that article:

I don't know if I'd say that Logger is worse than Intellivision Donkey Kong. It's pretty bad, but at least it has all four levels. The biggest problem with Logger is the controls; you'll be pushing the "up" key or pushing your joystick up, and your little guy will keep on racing to the left or right, and die before you can correct for this. It's also quite sad how Logger and Dazzler have so many graphics and sound effects in common. It's like they were too lazy, or too pressed for time, to make new stuff, so they just cannibalized one game to make the other. Just out of curiosity, on Logger's first screen, the "barrels" level, have you ever been able to pick up those prizes or whatever they are that sit there hanging in the air where the hammers would be if it were Donkey Kong? I've never successfully grabbed them, so I have to wonder if it's even possible. And if not, then why are they there?

Not that I'm aware of. The ROM is easy to come by if you wanna play it on MAME, but it can be kind of a headache, 'cause to get it working, you usually need to also have various other Century Electronics games that are also included in the ROM set. On the bright side, this enables you to compare and contrast Dazzler with their other duds, such as Logger. Since this thread has brought it up, it's now got me playing Dazzler again. I was just playing it when you posted your question, as a matter of fact, and I was thinking to myself, Wow, Dazzler is one of the few games I know of where you lose lives just because the game is so awful that you're too pissed off to even care about what happens next. Ironic that I had the game, and I hate Century Electronics, yet I've probably given them more lip service in these forums that anybody else ever has or will. What can I tell you- I'm a glutton for garbage.

I know it's been explained before, but I'm still confused about why it is that a new release of MAME would "break" ROM sets that worked perfectly fine with the version of MAME being replaced. What is the logic of that? Who benefits from it? How is that progress?

And I thought I was the only one who ever played that damned game! Good to know there's another masochist in this world!

ThinkGeek The latest ThinkGeek newsletter is hyping this thing in a big way. My first question is, given all the compatibility problems with every new version of MAME, and how each revision seems to make tons of ROM sets stop working, does this little gizmo come with any kind of assurance that being able to play your favorite games won't involve leaping through hurdles and pulling your hair out while you try to research arcane, missing ROM set issues on the Web? The ThinkGeek page does contain a link to openhandhelds.org with the phrase, "Please take a look at this before you buy," which I guess could be construed as a caveat of some sort, but other than that, and their mention of the fact that you have to supply your own game ROMs, ThinkGeek's sales pitch seems to suggest that gaming on this device will be a no-brainer. I'd like to think so, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I had a 24x CD-ROM hooked up to mine. Regarding the Internet, I was about to say you might as well go with a dial-up modem, 'cause with that machine, the real bottleneck is going to be the computer's ability to render Web pages, as opposed to your connection speed. But then I remembered, nobody even has a dial-up account these days. Oh, well.

A friend of mine recently dug his Dreamcast out of storage and was majorly bummed to learn that his computer's flat-panel monitor would not display a signal from the DC. Nothing, no picture whatsoever. And it's not like the DC is even all that old, really.

I'm assuming that question was directed at Spazmonkey? 'Cause I'm not lookin' for any vintage Mac stuff at the moment...

You don't even need to pay money for a CRT. 'Round these parts, people put 'em out on the curb all the time, free of charge. Big ones, too.

No stupid questions! You're trying to resurrect an ancient computer that only had a tiny fraction of market share even when it was new. Keep your eyes open and you may be able to get most of what you need without paying eBay prices. Look on Craigslist, pay attention to garage sales, and you'll find that there's always somebody giving away old Mac stuff. Heck, when you're dealing with Mac this old, you're likely to stumble across a complete system, free of charge, and the person you get it from will just be glad to have the extra closet space.

I'm proud to say I've done this, and it would have been very expensive, had I not scored an unheard of sweet deal on those SIMMS. Perhaps if I'd tried running 7.1 or 7.5, the IIsi might have done OK with 65MB, but, as I said previously, even with the RAM maxed out, that thing was a total dog on the Internet, running OS 7.6.1 and AOL 3.0 or 4.0. Dial-up connection, of course. However, I didn't try any gaming on it after maxxing out the RAM. Who knows, maybe it might have been OK?

You'd better explain to him what a "blessed" system folder is, and what extensions are. Remember, if somebody's not familiar with an old-school Mac, the whole deal with extensions and the extension manager might be kinda new territory.

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting you'd need a SCSI CD-ROM drive to burn the discs; I'm just saying the easiest, or only, way of getting the Mac IIsi to be able to read the discs would be to plug a SCSI CD-ROM into it.

I was joking about the floppy burner. Although... If one happened to have a SCSI CD-ROM drive, they could probably burn those disc images onto a CD-ROM, and there probably is a Windows utility out there for burning Mac discs from a PC. Goodness knows how difficult of a search it might be, though. LowEndMac.com is definitely your friend, and I would also suggest the following forum for tons of help from friendly, helpful folks: Mac|Life If anybody happens to join up over there, do be sure and look for me in the "Unplugged" forum and say "Hi." My username over there is "Bren."

Century Electronics' Dazzler had a great one. You see that monkey at the top-right corner of the screen? Well, when your little Mario-substitute climbs the final ladder to beat the level, he winds up positioned so that you're looking at the back of his head, and he appears to be giving the gorilla a BJ. Notice how the gorilla's feet are already in the air, no-doubt in anticipation of the toe-curling pleasure he is soon to receive.

Well, first of all, you're going to need a floppy burner...

When I bought mine, I ordered it with the B&W monitor, 'cause the thought of a Mac having anything other than the pleasant B&W of the original just didn't make any sense to me.

Well OK, but I still maintain that the IIsi looks nothing like a pizza box, whereas the 6100 looks like it should have a Domino's logo on it.

The Mac IIsi is not one of the pizza boxes. Those didn't come along until years later, with the advent of the Centris 610. Yes, the Wikipedia article on the Mac LC also calls it a "pizza box" design, but I don't agree. The Centris and it's PowerPC replacement, the 6100 (and its many variants) are the only Macs that truly resemble pizza boxes.

That would be hard to do, 'cause the Mac in question is not an all-in-one model.

What you want is a copy of Mac Playmate!

I'd really super-appreciate it if somebody could share, or tell me where to find, some custom tracks and cars or trucks for 4X4 Evo2. I've tried finding them on the Web, and it's a surprisingly daunting task. Every search eventually leads me back around to "KC's Evo Place," which is just infuriating, because, due to some technical problem with that site's bizarre series of tests to make sure you're able to register, it's impossible to register! Something to do with their e-mail notification system. Naturally, you can peruse their huge list of custom cars and tracks, but you can't download any of them without being a member, and it's impossible to register a new membership! Thanks a whole Hell of a lot, KC. Sorry, I just needed to vent regarding that. Anyway, if anybody could help me out, that'd be great. I have tried the custom trucks from some guy whose site's name is something like "Super Moto XL" or some such, but half of his cars are created using something called "Silverdream" or something, and their system requirements are high enough that I don't dare try to run them on my humble GMA950 iMac. Besides, more than custom trucks or cars, my main desire is for custom tracks, 'cause I've gotten quite bored with all the stock ones, which I can practically drive in my sleep. Thank you in advance for your help in this matter!!!!

The IIsi was my first Mac. Bought it in 1991 with a developer discount that a friend hooked me up with. I eventually wound up maxing out the RAM on mine as well, just to see what would happen. Also, just to see what would happen, I installed OS 7.6.1 and the most current version of AOL that would run on it (3.0 probably, but it mighta been 4.0), and I discovered that the thing was as slow as molasses on the Internet. Remember, you're dealing with a computer whose processor runs at something like 20mhz. Regarding video performance, here's a potentially useful tidbit from Wikipedia: