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You're talking about two different companies. Nintendo's relationship with Atari Games fell apart. However, the 7800 and XE were from Atari Corp. These were entirely seperate companies.

First a dental device and now this! The Jaguar case design sure has taken on a life of it's own....

Well, I will give you that most games of this time are "high-score" games. But is that really the reason why most people played them. I played them to just explore and have fun. I would argue that this is why the majority of people played them. Sure, there were the ultra-competitive people who's sole desire it was to master a particular game. But was this true of most people? I'm really not saying the Colecovision of the Atari 2600 is better or worse. I love them both! The both have very good libraries with few overlap, imho. Anyhow, good discussion....

Same as todays games -- exploring the game, and if there is an ending -- getting to it. At least that was always my reason for playing. I've never been too concerned about high scores.... Just my opinion....

Well, the X-Box, PS2, and GameCube are never going to be systems for "high-score" gamers either. The object of gameplay has evolved since the 2600 "high-score" days. The Colecovision was a line on this evolutionary path. It's not the Colecovision's fault for taking part in this process of change.

This is wrong on so many levels, I can't decide if you're joking or serious. Obviously Coleco left off the 4th screen to get it to fit in to a small ROM. ROMs were expensive back then. Any cart-based system (including the Colecovision) could of course use the ROM bank-switching technique to allow for a virtually unlimited amount of screens with a virtually unlimited ROM size. Are you aware that a prototype Donkey Kong cart has been found with all four levels? And I'm not talking about the ADAM version of Donkey Kong. The ROM is available for download with a bit of searching on the net.

I'm not a lawyer or anything, but I still wonder about this. I mean, outside of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr, how hard would the licenses really be to obtain? Most of the other games have long since been forgotten about, so I would think they could be had for a song. I can't see that it would be that expensive for Lady Bug, Venture, Mouse Trap, Cosmic Avenger, etc... It might take someone a bit of leg work to track the licenses down, but would it really be so impossible as most people assume?

Well, the CV did scroll decently well in my mind. Even two of the launch titles (Zaxxon and Cosmic Avenger) did a pretty darn good job of it. Maybe not as good as the NES, but still not bad for the time....

Everyone always seems to think it was the crash that did Coleco in. Yet if you spend any time looking over their financials from back then, you realize that it was their huge overproduction of Cabbage Patch Kids the year after the big craze that sank them. The failed to realize that CPKs were a passing fad....

Humm, good to know. Don't know where I got that misinformation from....

I thought the NES on a chip IS a Colecovision on a chip. Didn't the NES and Colecovision have basicallly the same hardware?

Beautiful looking game, too bad the control is so sloppy. I've tried really hard to like it, but I just don't enjoy dieing every 5 seconds. Move left, die. Move right, die. Jump, die. Okay, I've exaggerated a bit, but only a bit....

I wouldn't expect my kids to enjoy magic lantern or dance the Lindy hop because I have no idea what they are!?!? But I bet my kids would turn off Comedy Central to watch the Stooges. Some things are timeless, some things aren't. Atari 2600 = timeless Action Max = not so timeless What was your point again?

The title to this thread is about the funniest thing I've read in a long time

One more thing about the stock IIgs monitor. The refresh rate on it is 60 Hz -- EXACTLY the same "refresh rate" of the light bulbs that you may be working under. Thus back in the day there were a lot of complaints about the IIgs monitor causing excessive eye fatigue. The Second Sight video card operated at a higher refresh rate, so it was supposedly much easier on the eyes.... -Derek

Sadly, there is no other way to adjust the monitor other than with the knobs that are on it. My monitor also is off a bit like you describe.... By the way, I second your vote on the ROM 01 being better. It is more compatible with software that "bypassed the firmware". Of course, the developers shouldn't have bypassed it in the first place, but some did and so we're stuck with it. The ROM 03 does have a few more firmware patches in hardware rather than in software so that makes it a bit faster when running programs, but the difference is really very very small. Perhaps the biggest advantage of the ROM 03 is that the clock battery isn't soldered to the motherboard like it is in the ROM 01 so it's easier to replace. -Derek P.S. My other post should have said SVGA instead of SGVA....

There was a SGVA video card released called the "Second Sight" from Sequential Systems that allowed you to hook up other monitors to the Apple IIgs. As I recall, it was released very near the end of the Apple IIgs' life, making it pretty rare. But I'm sure if you're patient enough they turn up on eBay from time to time. You can change the border color and many other things in the "control panel". You access it by holding down OpenApple-Control-Escape. -Derek

You guys know what happens when you try to split hairs? You sometimes end up with a big hairy mess!

Hi all, I've listed my Atari 1090 on eBay. Please don't jump all over my starting price -- it is the exact same price I paid for it. So I'm not looking to make a penny off of it.... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW Thanks -Derek

Yea, it's mine. I didn't do the modification, though. It was like that when I got it. I seem to recall that back in the day, one of the magazines (Joystick, Electronic Games or ?) had an article about how to perform this mod. So that is probably where the person who did it got the idea. I don't know why they removed the "hood" though.... -Derek

There are a whole bunch of other threads on this topic, some that have images in them. Please do a search. But make sure you ask permission from the person who posted the image before using it.

Kind of like the question I asked here a few months ago to see if anybody actually used the Mattel Aquarius for anything. Judging from the lack of responses I recieved, I'd say that was a no. It is crazy when you think about it, because Mattel must of poured a lot of money in to both projects. The same with the Coleco Adam. What a waste of resources that could have been used to develop games!

The real question (in my mind anyhow) is why did Sears rename Street Racer as Speedway II. It should have been renamed Speedway IV instead. Perhaps this was a mistake? Or maybe four player support was added by Atari at the last minute when it was already too late for Sears to change things?

It was named that way because it was for (up to) four players. This is also the way Sears named most of their pong systems. For instance, there was a Pong Sports II (which included two controllers) and a Pong Sports IV (which included four controllers). Other than that the units were identical. There are numerous other examples of this in the early Sears products. Of course, today (and perhaps even back then) this naming convention seems very confusing....

I agree. I think we need full disclosure...