Hydian

That's not a model 3...the Model 3 was gray and the model 4 was white. I can't see enough of the pictures to see what computer it actually is.

Pretty much everything on that list was also available on the PC platform, some even specifically set to take advantage of the PCjr and/or Tandy 16 color palettes. Avalon Hill and EA heavily supported the PC platform early on. The Apple 2 and C64 were definately more game friendly platforms though.

The voice talents in Everquest 2 are really good overall. I can't think of any voices that are poorly done.

There are pornographic games out there. You've never heard of them because up to this point they've stunk. AO rated games...honestly that's what a lot of M rated games really are. And I say that as the furthest thing from a prude there is. I can't see making them more violent. As for actual adult themes, it seems like a difficult thing to make into a game, but maybe that's because I can't really think of a clearly adult theme. Sometimes you can use sex and violence offscreen very effectively. Sometimes, it is required to be onscreen for impact. Monsters Ball is a good example of the latter while the hitcher is an example of the former. Patents...completely out of hand in general. They've gone from being something to spark innovation to something used to suppress it.

Added my Sega CD stuff.

The ironic thing is that EA started out as a place for the little guys to get published in a market where they otherwise wouldn't have much chance of succeeding.

It's just a new version of the gameboy. They had a pic of it over on news.com It's small enough to fit in your pocket with a 2" screen. Not sure why all the hysteria. Nintendo can support more than one product.

They killed off Kesmai after buying it. Kesmai made online games (pretty much a pioneer of online games)including Airwarrior and Online Battletech 3025 which was in beta but was in better shape than most released games. It was part of EA dropping everything online except UO.

Chances are pretty good that I'll be moving by September, so I'm cleaning out the apartment and getting rid of stuff I don't need. I'll probably end up posting this stuff on ebay in the next day or so, but wanted to give folks here first crack. Nothing actually exciting, but what the heck. If you see something you like but don't like the (completely random) price on it, say something/make an offer/whatever. While I do need the money, getting the stuff out of here is priority one and I never know what to ask for stuff anyway. Shipping not included but I will ship anywhere. Atari 410 recorder – the educator, complete Basic (Boxed) 2x States and Capitols (1 Boxed) Recorder looks unused...box in rough shape (torn, etc) $25 Wico 5200 Joystick with Y-cable $35 Saturn Console with power cord and RCA cable 1 control pad Worms Madden 97 NBA Live 98 Daytona USA Bootleg Sampler Games disc only and in rough but playable shape All -- $25 Sega CD All games are complete to the best of my knowledge unless stated otherwise. Case conditions vary. Numbers are DP rarity and extremely flexible starting amount. Make offers if you don't like them. This is all that I have for Sega CD other than a loose original model. Anything left is going to ebay after the holiday. Ground Zero Texas 2 $4 Silpheed 1 $2 Sewer Shark/Disc only 1 $1 Lethal Enforcers/Disc only 3 $3 Spiderman vs Kingpin 2 $5 World Cup 94 1 $2 Samurai Showdown 5 $15 WWF Rage in the Cage 2 $4 The Animals 5 $3 San Fransisco vs Dallas 2 $2 2 copies Bill Walsh College Football 1 $2 3 copies Loadstar 1 $2 Tomcat Alley 1 $2 Corpse Killer 2 $4 2 copies Power Factory 1 $2 Formula One 1 $2 ESPN Sun Night NFL 2 $2 ESPN Baseball Tonight 2 $2 Vay 4 $25 Mickey Mania 3 $10 Supreme Warrior 32x 2 $4 Eternal Champions 3 $8 2 copies Lords of Thunder 6 $20 Lunar the Silver Star 4 $30 Dungeon Explorer 5 $12 ESPN NBA Hangtime 4 $6 Sonic CD 2 $8 2 copies Mad Dog McCree 2 $4 Surgical Strike 2 $4 FIFA International Soccer 2 $2 Dragon's Lair 2 $6 Prize Fighter 1 $2 Sega CD version 2...boxed (box in rough shape)...missing metal plate and power supply...doesn't seem to work and I don't have the time to look at it...$15

I can think of reasons not to get it. The top one would be priorities, meaning that buying it is a lower priority than a lot of other things. I probably will buy one eventually just because I habitually waste a lot of money of stuff I don't need and it is pretty cool from what I've seen so far. I'm in no rush to do so, however. I already have a ton of games that I don't have the time to play nor the space to store. I do have to agree with those that think the frothing evangelicalism is a turn off. Reading through the thread could easily make one sick of hearing about it. Probaby because instead of discussion of what appears to be a great product, it is people giving good reasons for why they don't plan to buy one being attacked for having a different viewpoint. I hope it does well, but I don't mistake the intention behind it. Atari is looking to make money from old IP which carries negligible risk and cost. They aren't doing it for the classic gaming community. They are doing it for the bottom line. They're probably only working with Curt because they took such a beating on the first unit from a small but vocal group (classic gamers) which in turn probably hurt sales. Now, I have no issues with them making money. They're welcome to make all that they can. I'm not going to delude myself into thinking they really care what I think.

I've worked on those in the past. Not bad machines at all. Getting a new keyboard for it should be simple (laptop parts are common and cheap on ebay) and the actual replacement process is basically a screw and a couple of ribbon cables. The eraser head is also simple to get. CompUSA or similar places should have them.

Anarchy Online is free to play now. It's all free to download from their site and no monthly fees (they are using in game advertising, but it is not intrusive at all.) The free accounts give you access to the main game, but you have to sign up for the monthly subscription to access the expansions (they come down with the large client, so no buying them.) We just started playing again and it's still a fun game. It's obviously not a graphical wonder like the latest MMORPGs, but it's a step up from the original Everquest. There is PvP if you want, and tons of real estate to explore even in just the main game. The site is www.anarchyonline.com Not trying to push it or anything, just throwing out a good option. I play a little bit of everything (Have active EQ2, CoH, and AO accounts and a beta for an unnamed game starting real soon.)

I haven't been thrifting at all for a while, but I stopped in a junk shop in west virginia today on a hunch and found the following for $35: Atari 5200 4 port power/RF adapter 5 common games manuals (including the system manual in great shape except for having the original receipt stapled to it) 2 wico joysticks in box Everything is the best condition that I've ever seen a 5200 in. There are a couple of minor issues like what appears to be glue from the plastic on the metal strip and one of the sticks not centering from one direction (I suspect a spring...will look at it this weekend) but overall it is pretty good stuff. The wicos look almost unused.

The EB here will definately be closing since there is a gamestop in the same mall and another one very close nearby. This is going to be a boon to Media Play as they've recently started to make inroads into the used game market.

I like mech assault. If you are into fighters, the DOA ultimate pack is supposedly good. We just got it, but I haven't played it yet.

Cripes...$60US is a lot for that. I've got a spare Saturn and game discs that I need to post on ebay soon. I doubt I'd get much more than $30 plus shipping for the lot unless I get really lucky (and I never get really lucky.) The consoles can generally be found in the $20-$30 range with just a little patience.

What were you using the 4 inches directly over your genny for?

Oh, and I should add that you can turn 360 without going from edge to edge of the pad if you set the controls right, so the mouse lift isn't neccesary.

Good trackballs have been around for as long as mice, yet they haven't really caught on for FPS games and don't suffer from reaching the edge of the table. Mouselook wasn't even a feature until relatively later in the evolution of FPS games. I think mice are so heavily used because nothing else has come close to giving the same kind of control, both in speed and precision.

The term you are looking for to describe displaying half of the lines at a time is interlacing. Monitors used to be interlaced too. A side effect of interlacing (other than visual quality) is that is cuts the FPS in half as you can't have more frames displayed per second than the monitor/TV/etc refresh rate. This is one of the misleading truths about video card benchmarks too. Being able to display 120 frames per second vs 100 doesn't really matter if the monitor's refresh rate at that resolution is only 85Hz. Both cards will display at 85 frames per second. 19" monitors are pretty cheap now (several at egghead.com are under $200...heck several 19" LCDs are under $300) and they surpass 1280x1024 (usually 1600x1200 max.) 17" LCDs are also pretty common and their native resolution is generally 1280x1024. I'd hate to think about how low the FPS is on Doom3 on the Xbox at 1280x1024. The hardware is way behind the curve of even the current midrange computers. If you factor in the cost of the HDTV (only fair) the mid range PC is probably cheaper too. Never mind that even on HDTV, the console hardware would still lack the visual quality of the PC as the hardware simply isn't capable of it. And by your own argument, very few people have top end HDTVs, so it isn't really fair to compare them to 19" CRTs which are fairly common. One thing that consoles definately have going for them is screen size. Computer monitors wont match that anytime in the forseeable future. You can easily output to a TV with your computer, but TVs, even HDTV don't display text very well.

It really comes down to what you like to play. PCs have a much better selection of control devices than consoles which makes certain types of games more playable. Consoles have minimal graphics requirements which allows them to be made more cheaply (PC games are regularly supporting 1280x1024 and larger now...consoles only need 512x428 or something close to that until HDTV becomes commonplace and even that tops out well below PC monitor resolutions.) PCs also have a game mod scene that consoles never will. Games like Halflife had their life greatly extended not just because of great online play, but because a slew of mods were made for them. That online play is also free. Consoles certainly do have an OS running on them. It may lack the GUI, but there is an OS under there. If there wasn't, every game would have to have APIs and everything written specifically for them so they could talk to the hardware. And of course, PCs have the pure horsepower that consoles can't match. This horsepower allows for things like smarter AI (not that anyone seems to be able to program AI mind you.) Things like turn based strategy and world building games are much better on the PC for this reason. Consoles, however, have a lot of advantages too. First, they are 'dumber' in that unlike PCs, you really don't need to know anything about them to play games. Just shove the cart/disc in and go. PCs do have some compatability issues here and there. Consoles don't because the hardware is tightly controlled (moreso than even apples.) I wouldn't say that consoles are better at any type of games than PCs. You can easily hook up 4 control pads to a PC and play games on the big screen TV (99% of video cards these days have built in S-video out.) Those types of games just aren't made for the PC because there isn't much market for it. Console games also retain their value for a lot longer than PC games. Six months after release, the console games are still full price while the PC games will drop more rapidly. We got Enter the Matrix on PC simply because it was $20 while even used copies for the consoles were still $50. PCs also suffer from the double edge sword of patches. It's great that the games can be patched to fix bugs or add content when console games cannot. However, it encourages software makers to release buggy software before it is ready because they can just patch it later anyway. I primarily play games on my PC (mainly Everquest2, Halflife2, Civilization3 at the moment.) However, I do have most vintage and modern consoles and play games on them as well. I'd like to see another Mechwarrior sim come out for the PC, but it appears that Microsoft is really liking the arcade stuff they put out on X-box (which is also good, but it isn't the same type of game.)

Something is fishy about all of this. The reason I say that is that my dad used to work for a company that makes medical equipment called Nomos (I think that's the name) here in Pittsburgh. They have the patents for force feedback which supposedly covers the vibration stuff in gaming controllers. They had a bunch of consoles in their offices because of it as well as licensing agreements with the console makers from what I understood. I'm wondering if there is an overlap of patents or maybe Nomos sold the patents off (they were apparently aquired by someone else last year.)

IBM set the initial standards that others followed, then quickly went off into anything and everything proprietary that they could. Unless you need an 8086 or slow 286 system, stay away from IBM. The voodoos came much later to the table, well into the 486 era. The voodoo2 was released after the pentiums were released with their PCI slots. Very few 486s ever got PCI slots (most had VESA slots if anything non ISA) and those were at the end of the 486's life when AMD had their pentium killer 486-133 chips out. Video cards...Hercules was the standard until Diamond came on the scene. The best of the 2D cards was arguably the diamond speedstar 24 which was built on the Tseng labs ET4000 chip IIRC. Rock solid drivers, 24bit color at good resolutions, and blazing fast.

Ah...when he went over there, all we heard about was how great lineage would be with him working on the US localization, etc. Then nothing really seemed to be leaked out.

He's actually working for NCSoft on the Lineage and Lineage II MMORPGs (the first one had the largest player base of any MMORPG by far...dunno if it still does.) I'd guess that he is working on other projects for them as well that aren't yet public.