tz101

Saw one today at a used game store for $12.50. Is that a good deal?

Word of warning: Viewpoint is very difficult, based upon my experience on a Neo Geo emulator version. But I agree, Viewpoint is Zaxxon-like in many ways, and the visuals are stunning.

Is that connector the standard for RF input in UK? Man you guys have some different stuff over there.

OK. The Power Games 111-in-1 system is awesome. The controllers are wireless, except for the light gun. It plugs directly into the penguin console for Duck Hunt. The games are standard NES 8-bit fare: SMB with the title screen changed, Contra, Arkanoid, Ms. Pac Man, Duck Hunt, etc. This is a top of the line pirate clone with a cart slot for Jap Famicom titles. Best NES pirate clone I've seen.

I found a closeout store near me today that has about 30 of these on the shelf for $20 a piece. It comes with a 111-in-1 plug-in cart. I am guessing they got a lot of these from one of the mall kiosks after Christmas. I picked one up and am going to try it out tonight. Will post about the games afterward. If anyone is interested, I will distribute these for just the purchase price plus shipping (guessing maybe $5-$10). I am not interested in profiting, only helping fellow gamers. PM me if interested.

Agreed. I overlooked this one in my original post. This game would benefit nicely from paddle controls.

I picked up two of these stereo rack units for $5 a piece at yard sales. They work great and the glass doors help keep dust out.

Donkey Kong, DK Jr. and Mario Bros. I like. But, for me Super Mario, 2 and 3 take too much time. My son and wife once Bogart'd the NES for 90 mins on a Friday night playing one game. Also, at one of my gaming parties, my son and neighbor played it for just as long. I've though of hiding the carts to create equal time on the NES. Solution for your gaming parties: Multiple NES consoles on multiple CRT's. I had one like this and it went great. That way, all the attendees were able to get their NES fix for the night.

Here is the fuse inside the power adapter. It is fairly easy to replace with minimal soldering skills. All you have to do is use a razor knife along the edges of the glued power pack to get it open.

Do you have any knowledgeable electronics shops in England? Maybe you could take your VCR and Atari console in and some tech could set you up right. Just a thought.

Sweet. Now, if they only offered a USB paddle controller as well...

Gyruss Space Invaders Demon Attack Enduro Beamrider Does anyone know if a mod can be done to make joystick-based 2600 games work with paddle controllers?

I agree with Zylon. There is a fuse inside the RF switch box that sometimes blows. This is probably the culprit here.

What's the foil method? I usually just scratch the carbon dots and pcb with something to make the controllers work but it's temporary. The "foil method" involves using a paper punch to punch out a bunch of dots from a sheet of good quality aluminum foil. Then you take the 5200 controller apart and use either a small dot of super glue or a hot glue gun to attach a foil dot to the carbon contact on the back of each rubberized button. Presto, this works like magic for making all your rubber fire, start, pause, reset, and number pad buttons work like new again. I did this to my controllers, along with new flex circuits and pots from Best, and my controllers are awesome!

I think the end of that cable with the shorter center pin is designed to plug directly onto this:

Remember that this guy's in UK, so they might have some different stuff than what we are used to stateside. Your pic is cut off, but I am guessing that that VCR has some additional component inputs to the left of where your image ends. If so, then all you need to connect your 2600 console is a RF modulator and a coaxial RF adapter like I showed you in another thread. Basically, you would connect your Atari RF cable to the Radio Shack coaxial adapter, then hook that to the 75 ohm input on the RF modulator. The component outputs from the modulator would then be connected to the back of your VCR via standard r/y/w RCA component cables. The RF modulator is not needed if there is a 75 ohm coaxial threaded signal input connector somewhere on the back of that VCR. In that case, the RF coaxial adaptor from Radio Shack would screw right onto that and then you are good to go. I hope this is somewhat helpful.

None of the Wario games No Kirby games Nadda Mario Party title Nyet God of War (and no desire either) Never a Grand Theft Auto (won't happen in my lifetime) Nunka on Super Smash Bros. Nill Final Fantasy series Not yet regarding Resident Evil games Nope on Panzer Dragoon

Funny, but I thought of making a portable classic console recently, mostly fueled by my picking up a fairly tough looking K-Nex toys carrying case at a GW. It is large enough to probably mount a 2600, NES, or maybe SNES inside of and not have to worry about water or damage because it is also incredibly rugged in design. I haven't investigated it yet, but with a lot of extra NES units sitting around, this will probably be my next project. I will probably rig my composite outputs and power adapter plug mounted out the rear of this case, and it could truly be a gaming survival kit. Maybe something else to consider would be a mini DVD player LCD screen and 12v power inverter. Then I could play it in a car.

This was done purposely by Coleco. Obviously, they wanted everyone to convert over to their Colecovision console, so by selling graphically terrible ports for their main competitors, 2600 and Intellivision, they could hopefully lure gamers to buy their system. And even if these gamers did not go out and buy a Colecovision for the Donkey Kong port, Coleco still made cash off the deal by selling them these sub-par game carts. It was a win-win situation for them no matter what.

Superman. Man, those graphics were blocky and horrible.

I saw the same thing at Salvation Army a while back. They had a few older flatbed scanners for PC that were priced around $10-$20 range. I had been wanting a scanner that would scan legal sized documents and they had one, but it didn't have a power cord. The cord it required was your basic PC or VGA monitor power cord, but they had none of these lying around the store. I planned on coming back another day and bringing a spare power cord from home just to test if it powered on before buying it. I went back a week later and all their scanners were gone. I asked the store attendant where they all went, and she informed me that the manager had decided that none of them were going to sell, and needed the shelf space for other items, so they all went to the trash dumpster. Wow. A couple of the scanners had original boxes and manuals with them. I spoke to the manager and asked him why he didn't simply offer to give some of those goods away and he had no explanation. I would have taken that legal size one without knowing if it powered on or not, but it went to a landfill instead.

I lived through the same time period but never was amazed by Space Invaders. I think it is due to the fact that I could never get very far on that game. One or two waves of invaders and I was usually dead.

Has anyone besides me noticed the general lack of classic gaming knowledge of the average thrift store employee? Now, before anyone bashes me for dissing the disadvantaged, let me also state that most charity thrift store employees I see look much better off than the handicapped people shown on their ads, but also please take my comments in proper context. All I am saying is that they need to maybe put a bit more thought in their pricing and system packaging practices as it pertains to classic gaming items. All would benefit from it. For instance: I went to a GW today and bought a pirate plug n play system called a Maxx Play 85-in-1 system. From the Chinese sweat factory, it came as two controllers, one of which plugged to your TV via RCA cables, and the other which plugged into the first controller via a 9-pin Atari 2600 type plug. Basically, the first controller contained all 85 Famicom pirate ROM's on a chip and a menu system, along with a start and reset button. The second controller looks similar to the first, except for the different cable coming out of it. There was nothing more to this "system" as in a console. The GW had these two controllers rubber banded separately and priced at $4.50 a piece, and the proprietary battery pack was over in a bin of power adapters to be sold separately. I took the two controllers up to the register along with the orphaned battery pack, and the cashier proceeded to tell me that she would have to charge me separately for each item. I explained to her that it was all one game system, and she called her manager who promptly told me that the items were for separate sale. Now, come on: Controller one with the games on chip would work fine as long as it had the battery pack inserted, but controller two? Maybe I should have left that one behind since I don't play many two-player games anymore, but how would they have ever sold it? Probably would have sat around until they finally threw it out for the trash man. Another instance: I saw a pieced out N64 system at another GW store one day priced for the reasonable amount of $15. Here is what it contained: one N64 console and its power pack. The top hatch where the memory pack goes had been removed and some thief had stolen the RAM expansion module. After looking up and down a few aisles, I saw the remainder of this system. They had two N64 controllers listed for $3 a piece, and a SNES/N64/Gamecube AV cable in the bin for spare cords listed for $1. The memory expansion module was nowhere to be found. Come on, why not package the entire system to make it worth somebody's while? Repeatedly, I see PS1 consoles sitting on shelves with no cords or controllers, listed for ridiculous prices like $20. Then I go down another aisle and find the controllers and cords thrown in spare parts bins for separate sale. Does any of this make any sense?

I picked up this cheap Chinese plug n play gaming unit from GW today. It is called a Maxx Play 85-in-1 and appears to be made by some company called VS Maxx. Seems to be one of the infamous pirate units with NOAC architecture, but I have never seen any of the games on the thing before so am guessing they are Famicom titles, and not US NES releases since I have a substantial NES cart library and would recognize those games. In any case, the unit has some problems. Mainly, when I power it up it goes through the intro screen fine, then progresses to a screen showing a layout of the controller button functions. After that it goes to a scrolling menu screen whereby the user is supposed to be able to select which of the 96 (?) games he/she wants to play. This scrolling menu is messed up in that I cannot see the cursor as I move it over the different game titles. I can hear an audible dinging noise, but no visual to know exactly which game I am over with the cursor. Finally, after blindly selecting a game, the unit goes to that game's Famicom start-up screen. On that screen, again, I cannot see the cursor that I am moving over the various menu options (1 player, 2 player, options, etc.). So I blindly hit the controller's "start" button but once the action starts I cannot see my onscreen avatar to know where I'm going. All the background graphics in each individual game seem to be fine, along with audio, but my character is nowhere to be found. So obviously I die an early death. I took this controller/game console apart, thinking maybe there would be something obvious I could see, but it is not so easy to tell. For starters, this is a Nintendo on a chip console, but there is no chip that I can tell on the system board. Just a PCB with some resistors, controller button contact points, and a fuse. Does anyone have any insight into NOAC type pirate game systems and how this might be fixed? Thanks.

I own a lot of systems, but my favs go in this order: 1. NES - Nonpareil game system above all else 2. Gamecube - Great system that gets dissed a lot by the general public 3. 5200 - The stock controllers are great, and the games are better 4. Dreamcast - Very nice system that everyone needs to try 5. 2600 - My first love, but its been surpassed 6. PS2 - Extensive software library makes for lots of fun 7. Genesis - never was a Sonic fan, but lots of good ones on the best 16-bit console 8. Xbox original - The graphics surpassed PS2 and I loved the original large controller 9. SNES - Super Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country, along with Starfox FX were great fun 10. Jaguar - I love the first 64-bit system