raindog

OK, everybody, chant with me: "I am not the target market.... I am not the target market...."

Actually, at my Wal-Mart last week, they had a small stack of Pac-Man/Rally X gamekeys being clearanced for 5 bucks. Maybe they were returns, I didn't pay any attention to their packaging. I hadn't even heard of the Gamekey concept, nor did they have any Gamekey-compatible PnP's in stock, just the same old wired and wireless Ms. Pac ones.

Mario Kart DS, because it's so many people's first hesitant step into online multiplayer, and it's done in a very non-threatening, mass-appeal way. It's also the first game I've ever played that at least tries to match me up with people of my own skill level (to wit: sucky.) I don't actually have Animal Crossing yet, so it's possible I might have voted for that one. And someone up above mentioned Pac Man World 3.... I've never seen that for the DS yet, just the Gamecube.

Never heard of this one, but now I'm interested: game station arcade 15 in 1 color dreams (1989-91 nes games; gsa y2k)

Hope I get back from holiday to find some checks in the company mailbox so I can pick one up too.

So what sound effects did they play while showing these games.... (a) Atari 2600 Pac-Man, or (b) Atari 2600 Donkey Kong?

Yeah, the new SP is calling out to me even though I haven't played a GBA game since getting my DS (no automatic sleep on close = dead battery all the time.) I'll definitely buy a third DS if they upgrade the screens similarly next spring.

I have the Intellivision 25-in-1. It sucks, but if that's what it took for them to start working on Intellivision Lives DS, I'm all for it And I'll buy the new versions of them whether they're still NOAC's or something a little more reasonable. I always thought the Coleco NOAC games looked familiar for some reason; now I may not be able to resist buying them for the sheer novelty of having NES reproductions of the precursors to the Game and Watch craze. I've been wondering why Telegames hasn't licensed out all the Colecovision stuff for PnP's. Surely some of the Exidy and other arcade ports that haven't appeared on PnP's to date (Venture, Cosmic Avenger, Space Panic, Mouse Trap, Victory, Mr. Do, Front Line, etc, etc.) all of which I really enjoyed on the CV could be licensed fairly cheaply and help sell a 25-in-1 unit. Also, Colecovision's video modes and sprites were similar enough to (almost a subset of) the NES that it should be really easy to adapt CV games to the NOAC's. As for me, I'm still waiting for my imaginary Odyssey2 50-in-1. I guess VTech would have to produce it, since you couldn't do it too well without a crappy little keyboard (actually, an Odyssey2 emulator could work pretty well on the DS with a soft keyboard....)

Awesome. I'm 36 and I asked for an FB2 for xmas as well, though not from my mom.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but.... if you're really planning on selling under 300 copies, have you looked at Lulu? They seem to be all about the short runs.

They were still selling them next to the Flashback 2's and Wireless Ms. Pac-Man sticks at Wal-mart the last time I was in there at 3am because nowhere else is open at 3am when you just want to wander around and look at shiny things....

Sorry for the bump, but.... I've held off on buying one of these. Does the current crop being sold by AtariAge work as advertised (the millipede and no-voice-in-quadrun issues)? How about the ones in the wild now, 2 months after its release? Do these things have serial numbers I can look at to tell whether I'm getting a fixed or broken one?

I've been wondering the same thing about the games on the Intellivision famiclone, but as of the last time I looked at a list of all known NES dumps (back in March, I think) there was nothing yet. My understanding of the Intellivision stuff was that they actually used some kind of scripting language on top of the Famiclone hardware, which complicated things somehow and resulted in horrifically bad sound. But my understanding could be lousy.

They have a couple left at the Wal-Mart in Halfmoon, NY (halfway between Albany and Saratoga Springs) but I guess I'll buy mine from Al once I hear that either (a) his support voice in Quadrun and thus have a second revision of the ROM, or (b) there's never going to be a second revision of the ROM. I only read the first and last page of this thread after coming home from Wal-Mart tonight, so it's possible the answer has already been posted.

Nanostray is a good example of the simultaneous "Been there done that" and "OMG!!xorz". But admittedly I never turn my DS off when I'm playing it, just close it and put it to sleep so I can jump right back in whenever.

It looks like the PSP version has "arrangement" versions of most of the games (at least Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig-Dug and Rally X.) I sure hope they make a DS version if that's the case, but frankly, I'll be more than happy just to buy Pac-n-Roll to get my Marble Madness fix in

I think you guys are forgetting which game has the oldest, most mature player on average, when all is said and done.... Now that's a mature game!

Because if I walked into a casino 25 years ago, I wouldn't have seen a row of Pac-Man machines flanked by Asteroids and Battlezone. The kind of place that's filled with ticket games now is the kind of place that was filled with Pac-Man in 1980. This isn't semantics, it's the evolution of an industry from one you and I like to one we dislike.

Of course, the article says the beta they played had no Pole Position, but the article includes a prominent screenshot of Pole Position. I won't get the GBA version, but I'll probably get the Gamecube one. I'm hoping someone gets a MAME going on the DS before long

When I hear someone as old as I am belittling Nintendo for not having "mature" games, I might take it seriously. What I most often hear is 14-18 year olds (and 18-25 year olds whose arrested development has led them to work at EB Games) crying out for more "T" and "M" games. Of course, 14-18 year olds buy the most videogames and are Sony and Microsoft's rather narrow target market. Somehow, though, none of this prevents Nintendo from making a profit on their videogames nor Sony and Microsoft from pulling a loss, every quarter of every year. Nintendo doesn't need to change a thing except their relations with third party developers. Doing a "Shadow the Hedgehog" version of Mario would just be transparent and embarrassing. Their existing characters are exactly what they need to be, and I'd rather see another new franchise like Pikmin than a dozen Metroid Primes or Resident Evils. But, I know they'll do whatever they have to do to keep their shelf space.

I really think the "oh, arcades would be profitable if they only put in games we enthusiasts like" argument misses the point. Arcades *are* profitable, or they wouldn't stay open. They just aren't filled with videogames anymore, they're filled with ticket games. Before video games they were filled with pins and the odd novelty game, and even then there were some ticket games. Maybe something new will come along that will replace ticket games, but no one needs to go to an arcade anymore to play a decent game. I'd rather play Nanostray on my DS than anything in any arcade I've visited in this millennium. I will say, though, that a couple months ago Just Fun in my nearby mall put in a DDR machine (finally) and it attracts crowds like I haven't seen since SF2 first came out. Speaking of "death of the arcade", it looks like I'm gonna be visiting Walt Disney World near the end of the year. I know when I went to Disneyland 25 years ago they had arcades with then-modern games (I was in heaven) and also arcades with vintage shooting gallery type games from the 50's and 60's as well as pins (I also enjoyed those.) Does WDW have any "retro arcades" with stuff old people like us would like from the 70's and 80's? Does it have any arcades at all? I'd like to make the most of my visit, since I've never been there and don't want to spend all my time standing in line for 3-minute-long rides. I might just start a new thread about it, but as long as we're talking about arcades dying I thought I'd ask.

What kills me about finding the rare "vintage" arcade game is that the ones that are still out there are the ones I've bought a dozen different versions of at home.... Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man (or Pac-Man for that matter), Centipede, once in a great while Asteroids.... and that's about it. Put a Vanguard or Bump'n'Jump or Space Duel machine in front of me unexpectedly and I'll drop whatever quarters I have into it, for sure.... they might not be my favorite games of all time but I haven't played them to death, either. But arcades are in business to make money, and if some kid is willing to keep dropping quarters into a machine to get tickets he or she can redeem for shoddy to worthless prizes, the operator will make a lot more money than he will off of me playing Space Duel for 10-15 minutes on one quarter (or Galaga for a lot longer, if I'm in practice.)

Or you could just take the thing apart and invest in a $2 can of whatever color Krylon is sufficiently masculine for you to play Barbie Horse Adventures on it without feeling like a girl.

I have a couple different GBA carts you flash in the GBA using a linker cable that goes from the parallel or USB port to the link port on the GBA, downloading a boot image that contains the flashing code. The one I like best is the Flash2Advance. I got mine from gbax.com, but they don't seem to sell F2A stuff anymore.

Not being into either RPG's or tactical games, I don't even know if any are out yet for the DS, but it seems to me that all the ones I've heard announced (e.g. Mario/Luigi 2, Advance Wars, Age of Empires) are turn-based, making them ideal for a system that suspends and resumes instantly. The instant suspend/resume thing will admittedly lose a lot of its usefulness when wifi gaming becomes the norm on the DS.... the two design goals seem at odds with each other. You may be able to resume a game instantly, but no one is gonna want to play against someone who drops out every couple minutes. But I assume the PSP has suspend/resume too, and the EB Games stores around here have wifi tournaments (I don't know what games they play other than Wipeout Pure; there are certainly no others that impress me so far) so it must not be too much of a deterrent.