2600Lives

It's the contact paste they used between the switch and the electronics. Mine did the same thing. I took the CV apart (kind of tricky, but not dificult, you just have to work at getting the front cover off), and shot a little WD40 down where the switch meets the electronics beneath it. Worked like a charm.

My DC petered on me a couple of years ago, but oddly enough it was the power supply. I had another one with a bad drive, and just put the power supply into my newer one, and voila! You can get DCs DIRT cheap now, too. Places where I live routinely sell them for 20 bucks, and sometimes that's WITH a game, too.

One cool thing you can also do is change the background picture of the actual DC bios! I have a biohazard symbol for mine, now.

I'd love to be able to solder, but alas, I have the "mechanics fear" and my dexterity has greatly decreased over the years, especially my fine motor ability (breaking my fingers might have something to do with that...). Personally, I'd leave a Q like it is. They are super rare anymore, and it would be a great showpiece.

You know, it's funny. Despite owning a multitude of their games, and praising many of them as my all time favorites, I truly, deeply despise Capcom. Why? Difficulty. They seem to focus less on balanced gameplay that everyone can enjoy and more on seeing if they can one-up all the other companies with just stupidly insane difficulty. It's the same with SNK. I own a TON of their games, yet hate them utterly and completely. Weire, I know. It's just that the designers seem so damned arrogant to me for making games SO hard. Like Mega Man 9. I will NEVER own a copy of it, because at this stage in my life, with my physical dexterity degraded so much, I would never be able to finish it. Even great games like Resident Evil are sometimes crippled by insane difficulty. If I set a game to the easiest difficulty setting, I expect it to be EASY. Computer controlled characters should NOT use supers and just spam the hell out of special moves and beat you into the dirt on the easiset level, dammit! Ever played SVC Chaos? Goenitz? All he does is that stupid tornado pillar move over and over and over and over and over and OVER. It's ridiculous! Marvel Vs. Capcom? The methods of unlocking all the special characters permanently is just the craziest thing you've ever seen in you LIFE. Never die once, finish 5 rounds with super cross over combos, use all your special helpers, get all first attacks. And that's just for ONE character!!! Have you tried doing the trials? They're NUTS. I can't even get past Vega's second one, because I can't do those stupid charge down type supers. The ONLY one I've managed to get all the way through is Zangief's, because he's never been a character that relied on combos very much (neither do I, actually). At least I was able to unlock all the characters, but even that took some doing, as I had to find a character that I could consistently beat Seth's cheap ass with, AND pull off their super combos easily (I went with Cammy, and managed to do it with her). The Mortal Kombat games, while difficult, weren't nearly as bad. Yeah, the final bosses were usually really cheap, but you could usually find a character or a move that you could spam and squeak out a win. Ever tried beating Bison on level 8 of SF2 Turbo for the SNES with Dhalsim? I've done it ONCE, and that's when I was training for the championship tournament that year. I've never done it since, not even gotten close.

SF 4 is overall better, I think, but they reverted to the old style supers (the charge back, then forward, back, forward crap), and that really takes some of the fun out of it. I prefer the SF3 idea of choosing your super, then just doing two quarter circles to implement it. MUCH easier. Getting Guile's or Vega's super off in the heat of battle can be VERY difficult. Oddly, though, Zangief's double full circle super is VERY easy to pull off. What SF4 needs is some new characters. The original 12, and the SF2T guys are great and all, but the 4 new main characters SUCK, especially El Fuerte (playability wise), and Rufus (character design wise). We need some guys that really deviate from the fireball/uppercut template. More guys that use different fighting styles. My vote is for Dudley and Hugo from SF3, Skullomania from EX, Cody from SFA3, Sodom from SFA, and Elena from SF3. Since this takes place after SF2, Cody could be out of his prison uniform this time around (or make it a seperate costume). Maybe even get someone like Birdie back.

From what I'm reading, yes, you can. You may have to make a copy of it and patch the image with a program, though. Not sure, as I don't have any PS2 copies or imports to try it with. Still, would RULE to have a copy of Darkstalkers Collection.

I managed to do it tonight. Pretty complex, really, but doable. There's little chance of mucking with the actual hardware, though, as it's just a file you put onto the memory card.

Oh, and as for the characters, they were kind of hit and miss. Guys like Yun and Yang...meh, just bland. Makoto? Ugh. Sean is just dumb. However, some were GREAT characters. Hugo is AWESOME, fun as hell to play, and one of the biggest sprites of his time (and he's just immense in SVC Chaos). Dudley was fun, and I liked the idea behind him. Elena was cool, too. Not enough Capoiera fighters out there. Oro was...weird. Never liked Urien and Gill. Too...naked. Q was cool, though. I loved his no-nonsense straight ahead fighting style. I also liked Necro, but he was a Dhalsim clone, true. Overall, the characters were just middle of the road.

I wouldn't say it's a rip-off, per se. It may borrow some elements, sure. I personally feel they play very differently. KOF is very, VERY dependent on special moves, whereas the SF games have always seemed to not rely on them so much. With 3 different punches and kicks, you can easily win a match using only basic attacks. Not so with the KOF games. Some characters in that series are practically crippled when it comes to basic attacks, and if you don't rely on your specials and supers, you're going to lose. Personally I feel that SF3 Third Strike is THE most technically superior, tournament worthy fighting game ever made. With the one exception of the parry system (I don't like it), it's as close to perfect as you're going to get out of a 2D fighter.

WCCW Mark, THANK you for mentioning the Mcboot program! I had no idea you could soft-mod a PS2! Woot!

Yeah, Dream Explorer is the meat of the disc image, but it has other things on there as well.

http://bswirl.kitsunet.org/ This is a COOL little program you can download from this site. It's basically a set of VMU utilities, but MAN, are they some great utilities! You can unlock 40 some odd extra blocks on each of your VMUs, it has a built in emulator for playing the VMU games (like the Chao one from the Sonic Adventure games) on the tv itself (and comes pre-loaded with the games, too, and a bunch of homebrewed and other ones), has tons of stuff like icons and wallpapers, AND comes loaded with thousands of game saves! Don't want to go to all the freakin' trouble of unlocking those VERY difficult characters in Marvel Vs. Capcom? Bugger it! Just download a save file to your VMU and you're set! The site also has the trial verison of Discjuggler, and you'll need it to burn the .cdi file that the program comes in, but just burn it to a standard cd and pop it in. Works great, and I had tons of fun playing around with it last night!

BUT, there's a workaround. If you don't mind about gamerscore, you can just make another gamertag under another e-mail address and get another month of gold. Easy peasy. Just make a random Yahoo mail to activate things, and you're good to go!

Racketboy as in here on the forums? Does he have a website where he sells these? I'm definately interested, as once I get an HDTV, every system I have is going to be hooked up to get the best possible picture.

Actually, I'd rather have the PS2 version, for the higher overall resolution and the fact that my PS2 is hooked up via component, whereas my DC is S-Video.

Meh, Pandora comes out soon. All will be right with the world once that happens... Still, they say they hope piracy will decline, but give it a week and the hackers will have it torn down and completely pirate-ready.

I love my SCD. Snatcher, Rise of the Dragon, Sonic CD, Earthworm Jim, great games all. I also have a soft spot for those terrible FMV games, and Loadstar gets some play in mine from time to time.

You can pick up the Dreamcast version cheap. The XBox and PS2 versions were limited releases.

All the servers are shut down now, but there are fan servers still up and running for a lot of the games. You need specific programs, and run the DC through your computer to access it. Lot of trouble if you ask me, though I'd still like to get the DC online to download stuff from time to time. Getting all the secret characters unlocked in Marvel Vs. Capcom is crazy hard.

The power switch is the most common thing to fail on the Coleco. It's due to a conductive paste they used that dries up. Personally, I took my CV apart, put a very small piece of toilet paper in the little tube on the plastic switch that sits on top of the power switch proper (to tighten up the connection), and used some WD40 on the switch itself, which works like the original paste. Works fine, though you do have to open it up and repeat every so often. The switch is replaceable, but I forget what you need to get to do it. I'm sure someone here will know, though.

Thanks, Krogur. Unfortunately, the gamegenie site doesn't have any gameshark codes for the Dreamcast, which was what I was looking for, but it's a good resource nonetheless.

Ok, so, what's the deal? For some reason, it seems damn near impossible to find decent codes for ANY cheat device anymore. The gameshark home page doesn't help now, and the old stand by Gameshark Code Creators Club is now a site called...CodeTwink. CodeTwink?!?! Anyway, does anyone know of any good repositories of codes? Man, I HATE taking 40 hours in a game just to unlock everything! Gimme a code and let me get on with my life so I can just play the game instead of jumping through all the stupid hoops it wants me to. Thanks in advance!

I still say that Silver Surfer is harder. I've never heard of anyone legit finishing it. Meh, G&G is a good game, but I really hate uber-hard games like that, so it really loses a lot in my eyes. I think I got close to the last castle years ago, but gave up out of sheer frustration. I did, however, finish Super Ghouls N' Ghosts. Took me forever, but I did it.

Sam Sho can be a bit of an acquired taste, it's more deliberate and tactical than most fighters. You've got to judge each and every attack, as a missed one can end the game VERY quickly. SS2 is probably my overall favorite fighter of all time, it's just SO good. I still need to get Metal Slug Anthology, but it seems to be VERY expensive compared to the other games, even used.