bcombee

How similar is the Activision game "Cosmic Commuter" to "Space Taxi"? It involves flying over a city, picking up passengers, managing fuel, and getting them to destinations.

When you bought your bulk discs from B&C, did they come bare or with sleeves? I need to get some more 5.25" disks, but having sleeves is a requirement.

Fortunately, the replacement cart for #35 did arrive yesterday in great condition!

Sorry to rain on your parade, but aren't you missing a boxed copy of Popeye? That was a Parker Brothers 2600 game, and I don't see it in the photo.

A game with a similar premise was Activision's Cosmic Commuter. It didn't have the gravity aspect, but was basically a taxi in space with some neat tactics. It reminded me of Choplifter a little too.

I got spam from SuperCuts a few days ago, and it featured a new contest they're running. Top prize is an Atari 2600 system with 20 games! They also have a couple of Transformers t-shirts and Atari Classics CDs for the PC on the list of prizes. Details on this are at http://www.supercuts.com/games.html.

For Microsoft BASIC, you may need to change how you call RND. If its consistent with later versions of MS BASIC, here's the usage: >>>> The Rnd function returns a value less than 1 but greater than or equal to 0. The value of number determines how Rnd generates a random number: If number is Rnd generates Less than zero The same number every time, using number as the seed. Greater than zero The next random number in the sequence. Equal to zero The most recently generated number. Not supplied The next random number in the sequence. <<<< By calling RND(0), you always get the same number back. Try RND(1) or RND() for that benchmark.

My best finds have been in the wild. In my first year of collecting, I found "Glib" at a yard sale, "Crazy Climber" at a Goodwill, and "Harbor Rescue" at a old thrift shop. Non-2600, I also got a MBX expansion module for the TI99/4A and a pretty large Odyssey 2 collection about that time. I also lucked out at the big First Saturday Sale in Dallas back in 1996, and got five of the Caltron 6-in-1 carts for the NES, which proved to be good tradebait.

I was back at CGExpo again this year, making it my third show. I was there in Las Vegas with a friend of mine who wasn't as into classic gaming as me, but he still enjoyed it. I saw the Atari talk, the Al Alcorn talk, the Intellivision talk, the wireless distribution talk, and the Warren Robinette talk, and I enjoyed them all, although I'd heard a lot of the stories before, and had already read the Adventure slides on the web. I didn't get any signatures, but I do have a picture of the guy who wrote Bug Hunt for the XE Game System in front of the unreleased 2600 light gun from the museum. The dealers were more active this year than last, although the guys from Video Game Liquidators weren't there. Atari2600.com had a lot of good items, but prices were high. I enjoyed stopping by Alex and Albert's booth and seeing the stuff they'd put out. I was tempted to get an Atari Age shirt, but really wanted a XXL one. The CGExpo booth had cool shifts based on Missile Command, Bezerk, and Space Invaders, so I got one of each. I didn't pick up any homebrew carts (prices too high for me), but I played Marble Craze and found it to be pretty cool. The original Computer Space machine that Dan Kramer had was great, although I didn't actually play it. There were a lot of NeoGeo games there, for some odd reason. I picked up four XE carts from B&C that I was missing and looking forward to playing: Pengo, Star Raiders II, Necromancer, and Caverns of Mars. I got a signed copy of the book "Arcade Fever" from the author, and also a DP Guide, 7th edition, which looks really nice, especially the expanded sections on systems like the Emerson Arcadia 2001. Bizarre thing: getting a metal "Slave Girl Princess Leia" figurine with the CG Expo program on picking up my badge. Where did this come from? It was a fun show. I'm glad I went, although I'm not sure if I'll go next year yet... I'll have to see if there are new talks and exhibits when that stuff gets posted next summer.

It's been a while since I've added anything to my collection, but browsing through the database, here are my top two + all my (6)'s: Glib (9) Crazy Climber ( Harbor Escape (6) River Raid II (6) Road Runner (6) Subterranea (6) Everything else in my collection is a 5 or less, from what I can remember.

Actually, the 2600 can directly address 4K of ROM. Bankswitching is done byhaving special memory addresses decoded by the cart hardware and used to select another bank of memory. It might look like 0x0000-0x0FFF bank 0 (2K) 0x1000-0x1FF8 bank 1 (almost 2K) 0x1FF9 - when accessed, select A into bank 1 0x1FFA - when accessed, select B into bank 1 0x1FFB - when accessed, select C into bank 1 0x1FFC - when accessed, select D into bank 1 etc... This gives a constant 2K of memory at the low end of the cart, and a switchable 2K at the top of the cart, depending on the last address in the small range that was accessed. [ 05-31-2002: Message edited by: Ben Combee ]

Just a quick suggestion. I really wish there was a "Comma Delimited" format option for searches in the database. Right now, I want to create a new rarity list that I can sync with my Palm handheld so I can keep track of my collection easier. I could scrape the data out of the HTML, but it would be a lot easier to just have it in plain text form immediately. Thanks!

It may be late to get a reply in, but it would be awesome if you could also license Intellivision and Atari 5200 emulation technology and include the Activision games for those consoles. While the 2600 was primary, the updates made for those were often pretty special. I hope this all works out! Good luck.

Many games, especially ones ported from the Apple II, used NTSC artifacting to display colors. This is a technique where the placement of pixels in mode 8 (320x192) determined what color is seen. The emulator has a switch to enable/disable color so you can work in the hi-res mode and see individual pixels, not the artifacted versions.

I went last year for the first time. I was a very fun show, and I got to meet a lot of the people from the newsgroup. In addition to Alex's comments: 1) Bring extra cash. I set aside $200 for me to spend at the show, and ended up returning home with a Lynx system with almost every game I'd wanted for it, all new-in-box stock. I also picked up a few PAL items that visitors from Europe had brought over in bulk. 2) Be sure to catch the panels. I saw most of the panels last year, and they were a blast. While I'm sure a lot of the panel content will be repeated this time around, the Q&A parts can be really fun. 3) There are shuttles from downtown to the Strip and back, so staying at the Plaza isn't so bad. Plus, its a quick elevator ride up to drop off your loot.