davidcalgary29

While the collections on offer are pretty neat, I`d like it even more if Evercade offered digital downloadable files on some type of SD or flash card cart. Even with the decent titles, 75% of the games on each cart are still pretty much filler.

Maybe we've all been inhaling the same fumes...or reading the same bad press. I originally bought a PS4 a couple of years ago because of IGN's glowing review (a perfect 10! A "masterpiece", they called it!) of The Last of Us. It's certainly an okay game (although I really wanted to sacrifice Ellie, who I found to be annoying, at the end), but I couldn't figure out why people loved it when its plot is just an average apocalyptic grinder. The high-water mark for me in modern gaming is Half-Life, and I'm still waiting (twenty-one odd years later) to find something to better it.

No one took an interest in the Jag when it was on the shelves.

I used to see a lot of bagged titles for the A8 on both tape and disk (dating from the Crash, or before) for sale around the Toronto area well into the late '80s. Lots of Adventure International titles, but there were lots from other software houses as well. I usually found them in the non-Atari stores -- the ones that specialized in Commodore stuff in particular, but that would also always keep a box of random items for other computers in a big box at the back of the store, along with old issues of COMPUTE!. They were -- of course -- always dusty and looked liked they wouldn't load at all, and it was clear that no one wanted them. I didn't either, and went for the loose used commercial disks that stores were selling in bulk for about a dollar by that time. In any case, I'm not sure if Kay-Bee repackaged their items or got job lots from a liquidator, but yes -- those Sirius titles were baggies. Alpha Shield may have been a box (I have a dim recollection of having a yellow one), but there were lots of baggies.

Ugh, it's all coming back to me now. I shouldn't have said that those Sirus games were boxed: they came in these awful ziplocky baggies (with printed instructions) that refused to close after about three uses. Pastfinder was definitely boxed: I remember I cracked the plastic insert about a week after I bought it. And Kickback had that hard plastic clamshell that's survived countless moves and thirty six years. Now that I think about it, I bought Space Eggs at that Kay-Bee store as well. That's what I remember: lots of Sirus and Activision titles at the Kay-Bee store at the Kanawha Mall. And then I went back to our hotel room and watched Max Dugan Returns. Damn!

I have a copy of 5200 Galaxian that looks like it's been floating in a septic tank for a decade. I should send that to you, gratis, for best necro-bump this year.

The only time I saw this at a Kay-Bee store was at a mall in Charleston, West Virginia in October 1984. I bought the following titles, all boxed and all under five bucks each (I believe that they were priced at between $1.99 and $3.99): -Thorn EMI Kickback (terrible game) -Pastfinder -Alpha Shield -Final Orbit I still have all of those games today, although I did later lose/destroy the boxes for everything except Kickback. There were no "A" games offered for sale; all titles were at least a year old, and most of them were on cartridge. And everything, except Pastfinder, sort of sucked. I clearly remember not recognizing many of the titles beyond knowing that they weren't the cream of the crop of Atari gaming. There may have been some disk games, but I didn't have a disk drive at that point, so I didn't bother to get any. There were games on tape, but I wasn't going to touch one with a ten-foot pole. The load failure rate on my 410 was just too great for me at that time. I distinctly recall the computer section being huge and messy. There were titles for other computers, too, but the Atari section was huge.

It's just so shocking. He sold me my STacy, MegaSTe (and a Mega ST) many years ago.

Wow, just wow -- so sorry for his family. This is such a blow.

The carrying costs would be huge, though, and it's very unfair to ask someone to do that. I can see some smart person doing a Limited Edition with a Rikki & Vikki lunchbox (just slap a sticker on standard plastic box) with two 3D rprinted action figures, boxed game, and a t-shirt of their choice, selling in the range of $150, but that's YEARS away from reality. After this run sells out, there's got to be a good, long period of sustained whining about why "only" 500 copies were made, and how unfair life is, before a side project like that would be feasible.

Love the idea, but this type of game is on several other platforms. I particularly like the idea of these games because they're unique. Except the tennis one, of course. Unless it's played by robo-cocks.

Yes, I can definitely see that, which is why 3D printed objects would be (have been) the way to go. I'm not sure how feasible it is to cheaply print up multicoloured objects, but even single colours would be quite cool. Also: I want to buy a Rikki & Vikki t-shirt (and two for the kids, too!). Someone sell (licensed products only, please) these to me.

Easier to animate and include sfx too, I think, as "realistic" movements wouldn't be required.

You know, I was kind of joking about that, but merch can provide a lucrative side-business. When I was at PRGE last year, I noticed the huge kiddie turnout...and the fact that few vendors were actively going after their money: Rikki & Vikki is tailor-made for that audience. And almost none of the new games debuting at PRGE had any product tie-ins; one of the few was Galagon, and you can be sure I snapped up a shirt. The Rikki & Vikki lunchbox would have been the must-have item at the event. Ooh -- or Rikki & Vikki gashapon! It might be more feasible (ie. cheaper) to print out individual characters. If I was selling the game at a convention, I'd give every buyer of the a free turn at a gashapon dispenser (filled with random characters, including bosses); two to five bucks for everyone else. Complete the entire set! "Maybe I should get another..."

Or keep cockfighting and replace roosters with small, ugly reptiles, and make it an alien-themed ring with comic overtones: no one's going to complain about bloodsport then. Or replace the animals with rubber or robot chickens. People will love it!

Well perhaps, but the fact that the losing party often has to pay some or all the legal costs suffered by the winning party often discourages frivolous lawsuits in itself.

The thing is that I didn't really see a lot of this in the gaming press in the late '80s, because most people had to buy games to play them, and game critics, now matter how much they hated Atari, typically didn't say "this game sucks. Forget about the thousands you've invested in your 2600; dump your console and go buy a NES!". I do, however, see this constantly now, when critics can hide behind their nice, flashy emulators and never have to pay a penny for a game, or pick up an actual joystick. or use actual hardware to play it. I think emulators encourage people to think of games as disposable, five-minute portions of entertainment that they can judge superficially without getting into a deep dive before they move on to the next bright, shiny object.

There's a horrible sequence in Broderbund's Mask of the Sun (for the A8 and other platforms), where a sequence of jumps is required to clear a lava field. Unfortunately, the pattern is completely random, and it took me HOURS to clear the field, and even with constant saves. Hotline Miami's controls on the Vita are horriblly exacting and finicky, and make the game much more difficult than it has to be. I die constantly because I just can't find the precise angle of attack, which you'd think wouldn't be a big issue with a crowbar or baseball bat.

Vita: Hotline Miami, 83 min TxK, 22 min Tearaway, 37 min

Neither do I, but there's apparently some issue in translating the vertical-oriented games at this time.

Four words: Rikki & Vikki plushes. They'll be the hit of any gaming convention! Please also consider the Weighted Companion Cube Physical Support Cube for a stuffie as well! Thanks.

I believe that Evercade has stated that a Jaguar cart is not in the works. That isn't particularly suprising given the state of current emulation. There's an article in the current Retro Gamer in which the founder says that he's a "massive" Lynx fan, so I'm hoping to see more efforts, although I'm sure they'd prefer to deal with only one IP holder, like Lynx 1 (Songbird) and Lynx 2 (Atari). Perhaps a Telegames cart is in the works? Or homebrews? I'd love to see Klax, but the vertical-orientation games are going to be tough to play on the Evercade without screen rotation.

There's nothing wrong with a "let's compare games on different platforms!" approach as long as it doesn't turn into a fanboi flamewar (which it is in that review) and covers the basics of a game review: is it a good port (if it is one), and should I spend money on it? You can tell these people just play everything on emulators, because the reviewer didn't pick up my one beef for the 7800 port: controller issues when played with the ProLines. You'd think someone reading a 7800 review would want to know that. I discovered Solaris in a box of commons someone sent me about fifteen years ago. I was test-checking all the carts (unconvinced that I should play any of them, as I thought that the 2600 was too rudimentary for me), and...was blown away when I put this in. Solaris was the game that convinced me that the 2600 had something to offer (I was, and still am, an A8 snob). And the homebrews have convinced me to keep playing it.

I read it...and then read the review for the 7800 port, which is a pretty great port: "For a game of its time, it was definitely a game that had some thought behind it. Unfortunately, games like Super Mario Bros 3 and Snow Brothers were around at the same time. So, while there was some entertainment value to be had here, there were more developed games to be had at the time." I see. In other words, we're not going to really evaluate the 7800 port of Commando, but complain that it sucks because it's not actually a port of Super Mario Bros 3 and Snow Brothers. Got it. What a stupid review! Most of those reviewers continue to conflate "Atari Corp." with "Atari consoles", and are only interested in particpating in popular myths (ie. the company was horrible, so the games must have sucked) rather than properly evaluating its games. I don't like the VGC either, as scores are arbitrary and seemingly mandated by personal tastes and/or grudges. I see now why you think these games were received poorly, but here I think it's the case that it's the critics -- and not the games -- that are actually bad.

People kept throwing in 5200 carts as bonuses in trades for other systems (this was fifteen years ago, when most commons were worth next to nothing). I believe that I had 20 or so commons, a multicart, and a trackball before I finally threw in the towel and bought a console.