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Albert

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Posts posted by Albert

  1. Posted

    Definitely this weekend, and our apologies for not having the results sooner.

     

    I've been very busy as of late and haven't had as much time to devote to AtariAge as I'd like. That'll soon change, though, as I'm about to change jobs where I'll be working part-time (working on a PS2 game!) instead of full-time (working at TiVo!) This will allow me to spend considerably more time working on AtariAge. We have all sorts of great things planned!

     

    ..Al

  2. Posted

    quote
    The only custom chip in the 2600 is the TIA, which to the best of my knowledge is not available (being designed in '76 an all!) So if this project works anyone could build the core of a 2600 system for next to nothing! As the PIC can be bought as a surface mount (i.e. tiny) component, it would be ideal for a portable and cheap 2600 system!  

     

    Ahhh, that makes great sense. It never dawned on me that one would have to steal the TIA from existing 2600 units in order to create portables or other 2600-derivatives. What would be cool is to see someone create a single-chip Atari 2600 solution. But I doubt that'll happen anytime soon as you'd have to include the 6507 and 6532 logic, which I'm sure Motorola wouldn't be too pleased with (assuming those were both designed by Motorola, I don't have an open 2600 handy.. )

     

    ..Al

  3. Posted

    Hi Mindfield -- That's a great collection of commercials you've put together, thanks for sharing! When I have more time I need to download a few more of those, they certainly are nostalgic!

     

    ..Al

  4. Posted

    Pretty interesting experiment you ran there! If I had those protos I'd be terrified to apply Goo-Gone on the labels. Who knows what the long-term effects on the labels will be. However, it would be very interesting to scan the labels while they're in this "see-thru" state. Yeah, you might get some Goo-Gone on your scanner glass, but I bet it would be harmless on that.

     

    As for the PAL Space Dungeon, maybe there were changes they wanted to make to the PAL version. These could have been improvements, bug fixes, and so forth. Or perhaps the PAL 5200 also required PAL carts, like the 2600. One would hope this wouldn't be the case, but who knows..

     

    ..Al

  5. Posted

    quote:

    Maybe Alex or Albert will comfirm....

     

    It seems to me there is a lot of more posting since the ranking system was introduced

     

    It does seem there's more message board traffic than before, but I'm not sure it's entirely related to the new ratings system and avatars. That might be a small part of it, but I think as more people find the site, more people post.

     

    ..Al

  6. Posted

    quote
    i dont blame you for switching to an ac adapter after that..i sure would have, but you musta been doing some intence gaming to make a battery leak (or the light musta been reallllll hot) i wonder this is why the GBA wont have a backlight?

     

    The Gameboy Advance doesn't have backlighting for two reasons:

     

    1) A backlit LCD screen consumes quite a bit more power than the reflective LCD screen the GBA uses. In order to get a reasonable battery life from the GBA, Nintendo sacrificed the backlight.

     

    2) A backlit LCD screen costs more money to produce and probably would have pushed the GBA above $100. Or maybe not, but it certainly would have cut into Nintendo's profits.

     

    I'm hoping that Nintendo comes out with a GBAA (Gameboy Advance Advance) in the future that sports a Backlight TFT LCD along with a Lithium Ion battery and a charger (preferably a standalone charger so I could charge a second battery while draining the one in my GBAA).

     

    ..Al

  7. Posted

    That sounds like a pretty cool project and I'm sure you'd find many people interested in it when you've finished. Not being a hardware guy myself, what does this mean in terms of the reduction in complexity it'll mean for someone trying to build a 2600-compatible board?

     

    ..Al

  8. Posted

    I also agree. The original Heavy Sixer really deserves the title as the "Real VCS". Not only is it the original, but it's built like a tank (and also weighs as much as one!) As a kid, I also had the four-switch version, but then, that also seems to be the most prevalent VCS in existence.

     

    Of course, the 2600 Jr. is nice because of it's more compact form, and the 7800 even nicer because it'll play games from two different systems.

     

    ..Al

  9. Posted

    I was always fond of the Epyx 500XJ as it was one of the first controllers designed with an ergonomic perspective. Something Atari certainly needed a lesson in given their terrible 5200 and 7800 controllers (the Jaguar was a bit better, but then, it didn't have a joystick).

     

    And of course the standard Atari joystick always worked well for me, although it could become painful playing some games for extremely long periods of time.

     

    ..Al

  11. Posted

    I have plenty of 2600 carts to trade, more than I know what to do with! Send me a want list and I'll let you know what I have. Also, I have extra paddles so I'd be glad to trade them away as well, especially if it would help you test paddles with your circuit.

     

    And I don't mind paying someone for a decent 2600 -> PC adapter if it works! I certainly couldn't design such a circuit myself, and I'd probably go through $30 in parts trying to build one based off your design. So even if the parts only cost you $14, there's more to it than just the parts.

     

    ..Al

  12. Posted

    I don't know if I've ever personally purchased an Infogrames-labeled product, and I buy a *lot* of PC games (as well as games for consoles, but not quite as much). That says to me that they don't have a lot of high-profile games, which doesn't necessarily mean they're bad, but that the games they do produce don't generate the enthusiasm that games from other publishers do.

     

    On the PC I play mainly RPGs (my favorite genre), first-person shooters, real-time strategy games, adventure games (rare to be had these days), and puzzle games. And I don't own a single game from them in any of these categories.

     

    If they do change their name, that will be a most interesting move on their part. The Atari name has a lot of stigma here in the US, but less so over in Europe (as far as I can discern from here in the States.) While it might get people close to classic gaming excited (for better or worse), I really wonder what the average joe will think when he/she sees games published by "Atari" on the shelves.

     

    The old Atari also had a bad reputation with retailers, due to the poorly executed Atari 7800, Lynx and Jaguar launches (*especially* the Jaguar). And their later computer launches weren't so hot either. I remember having a hell of a time trying to find stores that carried the Atari ST, and those few that did very rarely had decent quantities of computers in stock.

     

    Anyway, I was hoping that if Atari was resurrected, it would be through Nolan Bushnell, not an existing company like Infogrames just changing their name to Atari. If they do it, it's a pretty brave move on their part, and more power to 'em. But I doubt we'll see a new Atari-branded game console anytime soon.

     

    ..Al

  15. Posted

    If you scan it in at around 200dpi and send us the uncompressed images, we'll then shrink and crop it down to around a width of 600dpi. If you take a look through some of the 5200 manuals you can get a feel for how well this works. The manuals are plenty legible, and more enjoyable to read when you can see them presented in their original format.

     

    I'll soon have a great deal of time to scan 2600 manuals, so that section will become populated in short order. But I certainly don't have this manual (nor does Alex), so it'd make a great addition to our collection of 2600 manuals.

     

    Thanks!

     

    ..Al

  16. Posted

    quote
    well, initially it wasn't in my projects to build some of this adapter for sale because it's easy to build and it's cheap (I think it cost me near 7$ to build mine if i'm not wrong.)

     

    I'm not too terribly skilled at building electronics projects, even simpler ones as you've outlined. So I'd be willing to pay a reasonable sum to purchase adaptors that someone else built. For an adaptor that lets me use an Atari 2600 joystick in PC emulators I'd be willing to pay at least $30 for. If I could plug in two joysticks for multiplayer games that'd be worth even more to me. Then I could run an emulator on my TV, having much easier (and faster) access to games than using a real 2600. Not to mention the picture quality is significantly better as well.

     

    Now, if you could figure out how to support paddle controller also, I'd pay even more.

     

    ..Al

  17. Posted

    Actually, if I can just pipe in here for a second as to our graphics "requirements". Most of the cartridge scans that end up on the site are a width of 400 pixels (5200 carts are 500 pixels wide). However, I scan the carts at much higher resolution, typically at 200 dpi, and save the originals away as PNG images.

     

    Once I have high-quality scans, I then crop, shrink, and compress the image, saving it as a reasonably-sized JPG image. What I would prefer people do is scan these carts at 200dpi or higher and then send us as high-quality an image as possible, using a non-lossy image format (such as PNG or PCX or BMP.) We'll then do the remaining work to make the image consistent with all the other images on AtariAge.

     

    For everyone submitting scans, many thanks for your contributions! They are helping to make AtariAge the largest repository of Atari information and images on the net.

     

    ..Al

  19. Posted

    I certainly plan on purchasing a Gameboy Advance, although I'm disappointed that it doesn't have a backlit screen. I'm hoping someday that Nintendo will release a version with a nice backlit TFT screen that uses rechargeable Lithium Ion batteries. I'd easily pay $200 for such a beast.

     

    It'll be nice having a decent, color portable game system that's actually well-supported. I love the Lynx and all, but it's getting a bit difficult to find new games for it these days. Not to mention it's rather large, doesn't have a great screen (yes, it's backlit but has a terrible refresh rate), and the battery life sucks.

     

    Plus, if all goes well I hope to develop GBA games sometime in the near future.

     

    I will definitely purchase any Atari 2600-related multicarts that are released for the GBA!

     

    ..Al

  21. Posted

    I'm one of those (rare) people who actually enjoyed ET back when it was a new game. At the time it had pretty good graphics, lots of screens, and was one of the few adventure-style games available for the 2600. But I was much younger way back then, so hopefully I can be forgiven.

     

    ..Al

  22. Posted

    I'm not sure ET will EVER be a rare cart. If that day does come, then I can't even imagine how rare today's rare carts would seem.. I personally must have a hundred ET carts, and yes, I'm serious. I'm saving them so I can tile my bathroom someday (no, not as serious about that..)

     

    ..Al

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    Wow, I don't think I've ever seen that information floating around the web. I don't imagine it would be too dificult to come by pricing information for games produced by Atari and maybe some of the bigger third-party companies like Activision and Imagic. But good luck coming out with info for the less common companies. Didn't Mythicon's three (horrible) games come out at $9.95?

     

    It would be nice adding that information to our database if we could come up with reliable prices for a majority of the games we have listed..

     

    ..Al

  25. Posted

    I've won auctions on eBay from Multimedia 1.0. They seemed pretty reasonable and shipped out the merchandise in quick fashion. Would be cool to visit their store in NYC.

     

    I wouldn't give out much hope of finding Atari 2600 carts in the wild in New York City. But then, who knows, I've never live din a city quite that large. I just envision tons of collectors and simply not enough places that would have any hints of classic gaming merchandise. But maybe in a city that large there's tons of great stuff floating around because there are so many people.

     

    Anyone here live in New York City?

     

    ..Al

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