Gabriel

All I know is this: 1) I completely ruined 3 US Sony PS1 memory cards that I had bought from 2 different Wal-Marts and a K-Mart on Tactics Ogre. This was on 2 different PS1s. After frying them, these cards would no longer work on any system I tried them on. 2) A friend glommed onto about a dozen memory cards that seem to be official Japanese issues. He gave me 3 of these cards. I tried them on a PS1 with Tactics Ogre, and lo and behold, they worked perfectly. These same cards absolutely, positively, do NOT work on a PS2. Now, the "Japanese" cards may have been pirated versions. But the initial cards I tried to use the game with definitely weren't. But other than that, and never finding or even seeing a single third party memory card that actually works, I haven't ever had any problems with memory cards on my PS1 and PS2. And I was also happy when I bought my GameCube to see that Nintendo had gone with a familiar and easily portable way to save data (and more reliable, the N64 cards were a POC). And to top it off they have their own official high capacity card! (Of course, that's because their default card is pretty dinky compared to the PS2's card) Now, if we could just get a format standardized so that one type of memory card would work with all consoles...

It's a toss up between Star Raiders and Star Trek for me. Honorable mentions go to Qix, Countermeasure, and Pole Position.

I'd avoid 3rd party memory cards too, because of my experiences with cards on the PS1. On the PS1, I've never seen a 3rd party memory card that even worked. The PS1 wouldn't recognize them or they just wouldn't save data. Since the cards weren't even capable of doing any of the functions they were supposedly for, they weren't really worth the meager savings of $5 in relation to a real Sony memory card. They weren't even worth buying. The only problem I ever had with Sony memory cards was with Tactics Ogre. Tactics Ogre would kill any US Sony memory card I tried to save data to. The game would sit at the save screen for about 3 minutes each time and either eventually fail or say that it had saved (when it saved, it tended to save garbage and fry the card). The only way I found around the problem was to use Japanese Sony memory cards, and then the game worked fine. Of course, that means I can't really play the game on my PS2, because the PS2 doesn't accept the Japanese cards.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...&category=11065 I have this game in much the same condition. I got it for $5 during a Blockbuster game sale. Is it really that rare and in demand?

Oh. I'd stay away from the Sega Smash Pack unless you simply don't have a Genesis or any of those old games on cart. The music and sound effects on most of the games on the disc are so mangled as to make them painful to play. You could turn the volume all the way down, but games like Sonic and Streets of Rage depend on their sound effects and music quite a bit. The emulation doesn't seem quite right either. Maybe that last part is just me.

No Soul Calibur???? Dude, that and possibly Garou (Fatal Fury game) are like the only games worth having on the DC. And you don't even have 'em on your list! You MUST have Soul Calibur. I command thee. Go forth and purchase it NOW!

So, how is everyone drooling... I mean doing... on Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball? Bunnies rool!

Does anyone know how hideously rare the Ultima IV cart is for the Sega Master System? I've often thought about securing a SMS for myself, but the only games I'm really interested in are Ultima IV and Phantasy Star.

It compares fairly well. It's a bit easier than the computer version because of the way it balances out enemies in the earlier portion of the game. The ending of the computer version is just as sucktacular.

Oh hell yeah! That looks like pure shooter glee. I shall now add that to my list of things to get for the GameCube: GameBoy Advance adaptor Ikaruga

Nah. They're just jealous they can't make it to 1,000,000

Short version: I was a middle class child in a family that completely disintegrated, and I wallowed in shit for a time with tokens of my past life. Long version: When I was a pre-teen, I was the golden child. I was good in school. I was well behaved and mannered. I liked to read. I lived in a fairly nice middle class family home. I had nice things, a TV, books, a 2600, a 5200, a Vic 20, lots of other things. When I was 13 my parents went through a divorce. I went with my mom, and my little sister went with my dad. Since this kind of split results in parents trying to consolidate their children, I was showered with gifts. I can say that because of the divorce, I had a fairly nice Atari 2600 and 5200 collection at the time. When the dust settled, my dad moved away with my little sister to parts unknown. My mom stayed where she was and underwent a personality change (possibly from a drug abuse problem she developed). She kicked me out of her home when I was 13. I spent one night sleeping in a camper she had until I was discovered and forced away. I spent a couple more nights sleeping at friends' houses. Eventually, my great grandmother found out about my predicament and took me in against the bitchings of my mother. My great grandmother also demanded the delivery of my belongings. As you might guess, my great grandmother cared a great deal for me, and I reciprocated. I lived with her for the rest of my teen years. She became bedfast, and no one else was willing to take care of her. So, I took care of her as she had taken care of me. Eventually, my great grandmother's health deteriorated to the point where she had to be put in a nursing home. My mother, eager for her chance at revenge and also seeking to take my great grandmother's money for herself, had her declared incompetent and arranged to have me kicked out on the street. One month later, my great grandmother died. My mother looted my great grandmother's accounts, blamed me for her death, directed all creditors towards me, and then skipped town. I haven't seen her since. I found a shithole to live in, and got a job flipping burgers. When I left my great grandmother's home, I took mostly my electronics. Anyway, this shithole wasn't abandoned at the time. I payed $50 rent (which was about all I could afford) for a place with a leaky roof, no hot water, and vermin everywhere. The landlord was a total shit. Eventually, he simply abandoned the property. He left the police thinking that I was the owner and the police started threatening me to bring the building up to code or face stiff fines and be thrown in jail. Eventually, I was told I had 10 days to find a new place to live before the building would be bulldozed. Luckily, I did. It wasn't much better, and it cost $250 a month. At the time of that forced move there were things that got left behind in the shuffle. I regret leaving the 5200 behind. It was a gift from my great grandmother. But I left it behind because I had limited space, limited time, and I couldn't play it because of a total lack of functioning controllers and the firm belief that I'd never find any. So, in short, I went from golden child to white trash. I wallowed in my own crapulence for about a decade before I finally drug myself out of it and out of the second craphole I lived at. Things have gotten markedly better since then. I'm no longer flipping burgers. And, while I'm not rich, I'm now comfortable with the money that I make doing programming for an insurance company. I have a decent apartment. I'm surrounded by books, spiffy electronics, and all the little things that make life kinda neat.

Long ago, I remember seeing an Atari 800 in a computer store running Missile Command as a demo. At the time, Missile Command was my absolute favorite game of all. While my mom was doing whatever she was doing in the shop, I stood transfixed in front of the Atari 800 nearly drooling at the Missile Command game. One of the salemen came over and took the controller away from me and informed me that I was not allowed to play the demo system. After a couple of minutes my mom wandered back over there and asked me what I had been looking at. I showed her the Atari 800 in the vain hope that maybe she'd buy it for me. The salesman, sensing an opportunity, thrust the controller into my hand and asked me to give the game a try. I was innocently confused and asked why he suddenly wanted me to play it when he had kept me from doing it earlier, a question that he awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to answer without admitting that he was only after a commission. Interestingly, I think that store went out of business shortly after my and my mom's visit there. I wonder why? I never got an Atari 800 or its version of Missile Command. The closest I got as a child was the 2600 version of the game. Despite earnest pleading, I never even got the 5200 version of the game back then. Thankfully, nowadays things are different and my current 5200 sees regular Missile Command action. Now, for a 5200 tracball...

A Vic-20 was my first computer and it was the machine I learned to program on. I had to teach myself programming from the Users Manual that accompanied the Vic. Back then, Computer Programming was something only taught locally in college or in Private High School classes. I remember the first program that I made that I was really proud of was a BASIC Star Trek game where you commanded the Enterprise in a battle with the Reliant. I played a lot of Lunar Lander and Gorf on it. Plus, I constantly borrowed a friend's copy of Pirate Adventure. Otherwise I just made excessive use of my tape drive to program my own little goofy games and animations with the predefined graphic character set. Sadly, my Vic was left behind when I had to abandon a run down house that I was living in in the early 90s. I imagine it was bulldozed with the building (along with an Adam and a fully functional Atari 5200 4 port that I lacked any working controllers for).

I've played I, II, III, IV, V, and VI. To me, Ultima VI sucked ass, and it just wasn't Ultima to me anymore. Ultima V was OK, but seemed ridiculously hard from my POV. I never played it to completion because it just wasn't as fun as the others. Ultima I is cool in a minimalist way. It's neat to just mindlessly whomp monsters. I never figured out what to do to beat it. It didn't hold my interest quite that long. Ultima II is the first Ultima I played. I remember thinking it was insanely cool that you could zap demons with Phasors. I played it to conclusion and handed Minax her ass. Ultima III is a distant second best of the series. It was very deep for its time. The final puzzle and ending were very anticlimactic to me though. Ultima IV is the best CRPG of all time. Period. I've played it on C64, Apple II, PC, and NES, and I never get tired of it. The final dungeon and ending are very nice too.

What do I think are good ideas for a console? 1) Portable memory storage devices. However, I wish they'd go with something standardized like 3.5 floppies or maybe zip discs in order to allow easy transfer to a PC. 2) Better controllers. The original PS1 digital controllers were good. The current crop of everything and the kitchen sink analog controllers are just pathetic. The PS2 controller is best. The X-Box controller is as least marginally usable. The GameCube controller is total shit. Let's either have controllers like the original SNES or PS1 controllers, or things like the ASCIIWARE SNES or Genesis Fighter Sticks. 3) No pack in game. Quite frankly, I find most pack ins to totally suck ass, from Super Breakout on the 5200 to Super Mario World on the SNES. I'm actually happy that pack ins have gone the way of the dodo. It keeps me from having to pay extra for a shitty game. I'd rather use that money to buy a separate game that I'd actually like. 4) Backwards compatibility or compatibility with associated systems, preferably out of the box. This is very important. I love my 7800 and PS2 for this feature. My GameCube will get quite a bit more love when the GameBoy Advance adaptor comes out. 5) Small. I have a lot of stuff hooked up to my TV. I don't have much space to stick shit in. I also prefer small vertical profiles. I can sandwich my PS2 or (to a slightly lesser extent) my X-Box between two narrow shelves. I can't do that with my GameCube, thanks to its assine top loading nature and high vertical profile. I also would prefer a return to CD jewel cases for games instead of DVD cases. CD jewel cases are much easier to store a large number of. 6) Non crippled DVD capability. Since the CD/DVD games are going to be playing FMV and graphics anyway, they might as well have full capabilities to play movie DVDs. When you get right down to it, I'm paying for the capability whether they actually allow it to be used or not. While they're at it, they might as well add in some of the other features of DVD players like allowing play of MP3s and viewing of .jpgs off of CDRs. Issues that are important to others here, but really don't matter to me (and therefore I really don't want to pay for): Online capability 4 controller ports = I hardly ever even use the second port. Networking = yeah, its cool to hook 2 PS1s up, but hardly any games ever supported it, and it wasn't really the most convenient of features. Hard Drive = I think that the CD drive has a high enough chance of breaking down without also adding in a hard drive that can crash. Onboard battery backup memory is fine, as long as it has an easily replacable battery like the Saturn.

For me, it has been the exact opposite. I discovered emulators when I recently went back to college. I was amazed, and still am, by them. It's awesome what these people do and the knowledge of these things that they have. And, of course, I highly enjoyed playing all the games I missed as a child. Playing Star Raiders on VSS made something painfully clear to me, though. Sometimes the emulated version just doesn't scratch the itch. Sometimes it's the control. Sometimes it's the inaccuracies of the emulation. Sometimes it's just that the emulator runs like shit on your computer. When I moved out of the hellhole I lived in while I was going back to school, I discarded the only really old game system I had kept, my Atari 2600. I gave it to my landlady's kids along with several games (including an uncommon Star Trek). I did this because I figured emulation would take care of all my classic gaming itches. And that was the absolute wrong decision for me personally to make. Recently, I've started getting into the retrogaming console scene. I've reacquired a 5200 (a long missed console from my childhood) and I've glommed onto a 7800 (something that I had long wanted). Nowadays, I only use emulators to check out games that I'm thinking of purchasing (or for playing arcade games on MAME). And, to tell the truth, I play my 7800 and 5200 more than my PS2, Gamecube, and XBox. And no, I'm not raggin' on ya because you're becoming an "emulator sellout." As someone has already said, "It's all good." I'm just giving a different POV.

heh. I used to play the shit out of it on a friend's Commodore 64. I was never aware of a Satans Hollow adaptation for the Atari computers. (It wouldn't have done me any good if I had known. Despite earnest begging and pleading, I could never convince my parents to get me an Atari 800.) Is Satan's Hollow a cart or a disk? Will it run on a XEGS? I've been thinking of getting one of those if I don't hunt down a new C64 instead.

Thanks for the link, but it makes me curious about something else... Krull is on that list of games for the 5200 that were announced but never saw the light of day. I wonder if there is any possibility that Krull would have been an actual adaptation of the Gottilleb (sp) game instead of something like the 2600 version? Satans Hollow would have been cool as hell too.

Was a home version of Space Duel ever attempted for any of the Atari consoles? I seem to dimly recall a mention in a videogame magazine of the time that Space Duel was in the works for the Atari 5200. I know no one has found a proto of it (or they're keeping really quiet). I'm mainly wondering if I'm just going crazy and misrembering the mention of the game. I think Space Duel is one of the forgotten classics of Atari, along with Black Widow and possibly Liberator. Seeing the proto for Tempest makes me think that a semi-decent version of Space Duel might have been possible on the 5200. I guess if it was planned at one point then it never made it because of the trouble encounted in Asteroids.

ACK! About a week ago, I noticed that a reproduction cart of 5200 Jr. Pac Man was listed as coming soon to the Atari Age Store. I seem to remember that it was going to be available on Monday (1/20). Today I received my previous order from Atari Age and decided that I wanted to go ahead and also get Jr. Pac Man from the online store as well. Unfortunately, Jr. Pac Man has disappeared from the online store's product listings. What happened? Did Jr. Pac Man sell out already? Was there not enough interest in the reproduction so plans changed? Are other reproductions and homebrews more in demand than Jr Pac? Just curious.

Will the big dual analog jet control stick for the PS1 work with this adaptor? Playing Star Raiders with that would be unbelievably kewl. Defender and Star Trek might not be too bad with that control either.

I wish I still had my 2600 Star Trek cart. That high score you have listed for it is depressing.

My first find this year is a NES Romance of the Three Kingdoms II. It's a pretty cool little cart.

I can't believe that no one has mentioned Taboo yet.