Max_Chatsworth

I personally never saw any evidence that Diff'rent strokes and Married were part of the same universe, or related.  

One I *DID* see that a lot of people don't know is that Diff'rent strokes and Sanford and Son were part of the same universe.  There was an episode where Grady from Sanford and Son found birth certificates for the boys in Fred's junk and brought it over to the Drummond's house or something along those lines.   I was pretty shocked.  Fred Sanford wasn't in it at all(not surprisingly).  

Go away!  Don't come 'round here no more!

I got a fever!!

And the only per-scription......

Just wait for them to open their mouths and that will soon dispel that myth....

@GoldLeader Ok..cool. So it's a more hifi reboot of the old 2600 Gorf!   I remember when that game hit my local Showbiz Pizza(2nd one in the country!) Me and my brother were like "No way! It has Space Invaders AND Galaxian in one game!"  

What. The. Hell?!?!

I had no idea there was ever another movie after the first one.  Hell, when the first one came out, and I showed my buddies the trailer, I could NOT convince them that this was a real movie and not just a fake trailer. 

I was such a huge FP fan that I made a stop in the FP on a road trip through California about 8-10 years ago just so I could take a picture with the sign and see the town. 

So they've been making more FP movies after the first one?!?!  How did I not know about this?!

@Cebus Capucinis Ok, I'm a luddite..what is Gorf Arcade?

@Atarian7 what kind of computer?

Trying to schedule/fit in one more kayaking/camping expedition with my son before he leaves for college this summer.  He'll be going to the US Coast Guard Academy, so he will have only Christmas time and about 2-3 weeks off each summer as they keep them pretty busy year round for those 4 years with summer internships, summer cruises, etc....  

@7800Knight  ???  Not sure why you think I'm angry.  What I wrote was clearly an attempt at humor.  

I'm not sure, but I have a Japanese wife and they have that whole Zen thing. I'm pretty sure you can get a house "next to nothing" not "for next to nothing". 

@GoldLeader Absolutely!  Good thing you mentioned there, because I probably wouldn't have thought to. My "find" is an actual piece of Atari lore hardware, so I was just going to stick to the regular places, but I will definitely post there! Thanks!

To this day..I am haunted by Cloudy Mountain....

I'd get one.   

I read the book when I was very young. I want to say 7th grade or so as it was assigned reading that year. I don't recall everything about the book, but I did see the movie and liked it.  There were things that were different obviously, but probably many more that I don't remember at all.  I like the movie pretty well.  It was really gritty in a Saving Private Ryan sort of way, if you know what I mean?

"Ten years ago....on a night just like tonight....."

Agreed.  I'm a software engineer and I worked in the are of AI/machine learning for several years.  We are so unbelievably far away from what everyone *thinks* when they hear "AI". I can explain to people enough how simple it all is right now. 

That being said, the area of art is actually a good area for it, because one of the most difficult parts of AI is coming to the right/most sensible answers to problems.  That doesn't exist with art.  There is no right answer, no more efficient result(for the most part). It's just subjective to the utmost degree. 

It does make some neat/haunting images in various styles and I for one have already generated several prints for my home/work spaces and will never pay for art again.  

@_The Doctor__ Thanks for that.  Sir-Tech Software sounded *very* familiar when I followed that link you provided. Then I realized the guy who started it wrote Wizardry.  My brother and I played the HELL out of that game back in the day.  My brother was 4 years older, so he was in high school when I was in Jr. High (remember those?...LOL), but this was the early 80's when every public school in the midwest had Apple computers.  They didn't have dedicated "computing" classes at the jr. high level back then, but we had large segments of using it in various math classes, geometry, science, etc.   But the high school *did* have "computer science" I & II and those were basically learning to use then program Apple Computers.  My brother came home one day all full of excitement because he had this pirated game on disk...Wizardry.  We couldn't actually play it at home, as we had an Atari 400 at the time(the later an 800XL) at home. But I took it to one of my friends who had an Apple's house and we copied it for him and me.  Then I took my copy to school and began playing it there with my friends when I wasn't supposed to  ..and playing it when at one of my Apple friends' houses.  Then eventually, my brother came home with a huge dot matrix printout from school one day.   A much more accomplished hacker buddy of his at school had figured out how to get source listings for Wizardry, so we had a huge dot-matrix print out of the source code and a digital version as well.  We had just gotten our 800 XL by this point and so we set out converting the entire game, by hand coding, to Atari Basic so we could play it at home on our computer.  Nevermind the fact that Wizardry had been out for at least 2 years by the time the 800XL came out and probably Wizardry II, III, etc were out...LOL.  .I don't even remember what language Wizardry was in.  I don't think it was BASIC, but I don't think it was ASM, because we could definitely actually sort of understand the code to port to Atari BASIC.  Needless to say it was a failed effort...but it was an exciting time to be a 12 year old!

@Atarian7 It's shaping up that way here to in the Kansas City metro area.   We had that one couple of inches a few weeks back and no more in sight right now.  I was telling my wife, who didn't grow up here and is not familiar with the area from 30+ years ago, that when I was a kid, pretty much all of January and February and into March the ground was in constant cover of snow.  Hell, it was always 50/50 every "Spring" break in March as kids whether we'd be playing baseball/football in the neighborhood field in short sleeves or sledding the entire week off from school.   Not this snow/melt..snow/melt stuff it does today. I lived away from the area for 30 years in warm climates(mostly Hawaii), so I didn't notice any gradual change,but moving back to the area a few years ago, it's a stark difference to my childhood memories.  

@Paul Westphal I had to google that game, because I had never seen it. (I'm admittedly a very casual retro gamer/computer enthusiast) It looks pretty interesting.  Was it a homebrew thing or was it a major release back in the day? 

Hey gang,

@the4thman brought up the cocktail cab he owns, and it got me thinking which games were actually *better* in that format. Then immediately thought of Atari Football.  But then that got me to thinking, would you *really* classify that as cocktail or it's own thing.  For example, Atari Football was two players facing off against each other, but both players actually stood.  But, it *did* have a glass top.  But, the glass top wasn't completely flat all the way across.  To wit:

Also, there *did* exist sitting version of that game. I know because I played a few.  But I don't recall if the cabinet was fully cocktail or just the same top as the regular but shorter? Unfortunately, I can't find an image of one of those.  But, since a sitting version existed, I would definitely say that strengthens the argument that version in the picture above, would not be classified as "cocktail".  I think I'd classify it that way, even if a sitting version *didn't* exist.  But, apparently not everyone agrees, as this listing image shows(and it is standing height). And some might consider even the short/sitting height not to be a cocktail since it wasn't the unified glass top, etc.  

Now, to further complicate things.  There was also a 4 person version of this game.  Where the top WAS completely straight across, although you did have controls to deal with, instead of being under the glass like classic cocktail games.  But again, you have the same situation apparently where you have a standing height(shown below, 1st  image is next to another game cabinet, glass door, so you can see it's standing height).  And you have a "cocktail" height as can be seen in the 2nd image below with the chairs. But again, not under a smooth glass unified surface with controls below.  So the question on the 4 players is they all 

So, now that we are talking about things that only an insane person concerns themselves with, where do you all fall on this?  

@the4thman I completely agree.  It immediately takes me back to the foyer/waiting area of an early 80's Steak and Ale restaurant...LOL!  If I was going to do a real cabinet project of any kind, I have thought I might do the same.  

For  few games, it was actually better in that format, like Atari Football for one.  Which brings me to an interesting question which I'll post separately here. 

@Keatah You know, I was very young when Pong was still popular.  Like maybe 4 or 5 years old.  I know I played it at least one time at a bowling alley or skating rink or something when I was probably in kindergarten or the 1st grade.  By the time I really started to going to bowling alleys and skating rinks with my parents/older siblings it was already the days of Seawolf, Stunt Cycle, Gun Fight, and a bit later Space Invaders.  It was that time when it was post Pong, but pre full wave arcade.  The first few machines trickling into pool halls over those years.  

I was pretty sure they were called that because they had a glass top, table height, to hold drinks on?  

I miss the days when El Nino was all the rage: