Scrubbing a Hard Drive

[Scrubbing a Hard Drive]

The absolute, most sure way of deleting the data you want would be to wipe the drive and reinstall the OS. If you've lost the disk for that, then there's not much that you can do outside of hunt, hunt, hunt, hope you got it all, then find a program that will overwrite the space you freed up several times.

 

Even deleting My Documents, you have to contend with programs that may have stashed cache copies elsewhere on the hard drive.

 

Uuuh, no. Overwriting your OS is NOT enough by a longshot. With a few free tools anyone could still retrieve your zebra pr0n. Use a real shredding tool please..

http://www.dban.org/

 

Yeah, if I was selling a PC etc I would definitely use something like dban -- I found it quite useful in the past -- and stick something like linux on afterwards or even just leave it without an OS, as someone else suggested.

[When does "difficult" become "cheap"?]

So, when does difficult become cheap?

 

It's an interesting question. For me, Dragon's Lair would probably be top of the list. It looked great for the time but it was a real money trap: it was just so arbitrary which way you had to move to avoid dying when you first encountered a new screen (from what I remember).

[A Couple of Donkey Kong Questions]

Greetings Arcadsters...

 

I was playing some old skool Donkey Kong and I noticed a couple of things. First the sound is really muffled for some reason. Is this a MAME issue or was the real thing like this?

 

If my memory serves me correctly, some of the versions did actually sound quite muffled/quiet when I used to play them in the arcades. I've heard a muffled MAME version which sounds the same to me. Also, I think they varied in whether they made a sound or not when he jumped (or ran, possibly).

[Retro Arcade Opening in Central NJ]

This sounds great. If I lived anywhere near you, I would pop down to see it. Good luck with it all!

[Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks]

That's interesting, thanks for letting us know. I used to have kindle software downloaded on my PC to read books off Amazon and might try out a kindle version of the fighting fantasy books if it handles the dice and the inventory.

[Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age]

Now on youtube, here.

 

Thanks for the link. It's not something I know that much about and was quite interesting to watch. There was another one I saw as well yesterday, which overlaps with this, that I thought was quite cool too,IMO:

 

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=5cecky3pvxc

[Nerdygrrl's Upright Collection]

Yeah, I am a huge SI geek and this is one of my most treasured possessions.

Yes, I can imagine. You have a nice collection but that upright was my favourite as well (the artwork looks familiar to me on the side from when I used to play it).

 

 

Your also halfway there to having one of my favorite games ever ...Marble Madness.

Yeah, that was a great game to play.

[The official "Moon Cresta" thread]

In EUrope,it was definitely released under the name MOON CRESTA

 

Yeah, that's what I used to play. I've never heard of 'Eagle' before.

 

edit: @opcode: looks good so far. Good luck with it!

[What is the quintessential Atari game?]

I had no interest in playing Dragon's Lair when it came out. First of all, I couldn't waste my precious quarters on it, but mostly, once you get beyond the awesomeness of how great it looked at the time, the game didn't seem very exciting at all... boring, in fact. I wasn't impressed by those who got far in the game... I assumed it was just because they spent so much money on it.

Out of curiousity, what did you waste your precious quarters on?

At around the same time, at the same arcade, I probably stuck with Asteroids, Phoenix, Galaxian, or Pole Position more than anything else. At other arcades or stores, it was Star Castle, Deluxe Space Invaders, and later, Time Pilot, Zippy Race, Gauntlet, and Rampage.

 

edit: the key is I wasted the quarters more slowly. This particular Dragon's Lair was 50 cents, while everything else was 25 cents.

 

Yeah, that was basically my experience of Dragon's Lair as well: it was pretty amazing to see it at the time but, after playing it a few times, it just became really expensive in a very short space of time and there were too many other games I wanted to play.

 

There also didn't seem to be any logic to where you're meant to move, from what I remember, so you had no chance to increase your probability of survival when you first encountered new bits which made it a bit pointless (and expensive) for me, after the novelty of it wore off.

[What is the quintessential Atari game?]

No Basic Math??

 

No one mentioned hangman either

 

I think in general I'd probably go for combat over space invaders because, IMO, it better captures that whole 'families and mates playing together' or 'social side of gaming', which was a lot of what it was about (for me, anyway) back then.

 

For me personally, I'd probably say adventure or berzerk.

[Coin op/Arcade games ported from computer/console games]

I'm pretty sure, around the time the SNES came out, I remember playing in the pub an arcade version of F-Zero which had SNES controllers stuck on it as well. I seem to remember somebody telling me the machine was a promo version for advertising the SNES (I don't know what was inside the machine and how the system was designed). According to Mr Weiss (whoever that is) the arcade version came out first which surprised me:

 

Like the futuristic arcade racer on which it is based, F-Zero is a one-player contest, which is a shame considering how the insertion of a two-player mode would've made this fantastic port even better than its coin-op counterpart. Still, with its high speeds, slick graphics (aided by Mode 7 effects), three levels of difficulty, and exorbitant fun factor, this launch title is a must-have title for Super NES owners. Casual fans will enjoy the simple act of racing while hardcore gamers will race for hours on end so they can save (and improve upon) their best times via battery backup. This is a highly faithful port of one of the all-time great racing games.

 

http://www.allgame.c...ame.php?id=2485

[Were Infocom games ever released in languages other than English?]

Does anyone know if the Zork series was ever officially or unofficially available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, etc.?

Related topic -- indicates that English was the only language [read on]

 

So, I did a search for the related ROMs. In my search, I only turned up English versions of the games. One such site is here

 

 

There seems to be some kind of German version of Zork near the bottom of the page. Not quite sure what it is, though, or how playable it is.

 

Zork I- Das Grosse Unterweltreich v3 (1981-6)(Infocom)(de)(beta)[h][880113].zip

[Were Infocom games ever released in languages other than English?]

You've never played Le Zork?

 

 

I believe some later Zork games were released on Japanese consoles (I know the NEC PC-FX had one) with some translation

that's interesting.

 

 

Does anyone know if the Zork series was ever officially or unofficially available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, etc.?

Having had a quick look at these two links, it doesn't look to me they were originally translated/released to any of these languages you mention:

 

http://www.ifarchive.../fact-sheet.txt

 

http://www.ifarchive...fo/gameinfo.txt

 

both from this page:

 

http://www.ifarchive...focomXinfo.html

 

 

There is a French version of adventure here:

 

http://www.ifarchive...odeXfrench.html

 

There may be translations of other relevant games, here and there, if you have a look for them on the IF archives

[I´ve got email from ATARI today...]

I had a telephone call with a German lawyer yet. He told me to write them a email, where I should ask about the detailed issues also I will point them to the fact that there are many people also doing the same and it might be useful to ask, why there is in the build in ATARI BASIC a SAVE command, when it is not allowed to make programmes and to publish them. All the letter will be written in my home language since that´s the language they have to choose, as my whole webspace is under German laws.

 

I´ll keep you informed, what happens.

 

It's probably the best way to deal with this, IMO, even if it is just a random nasty e-mail etc with no real basis for legal action. Good luck with it!

[New Commodore Branded Computers]

Thanks for the link. It was interesting to watch.

[Multijoy16]

Thanks for sharing. That looks a lot of fun.

[600 Atari Games]

Great collection!

[Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks]

Yeah, looks good to me, too. I used to have quite a few of the books when I was a kid as well. Deathtrap dungeon was one of my personal favourites on the PS1 (although I can't remember how faithful it was to the book).

[Classic Donkey Kong Reimagined]

Now if only this were a real game.

 

Yes, that would definitely be interesting to see.

[What is your favorite imagic game on the atari 2600]

I still haven't played all of them but I always liked Imagic as a company. I used to have Star Voyager and Atlantis first time round which I really liked. I discovered Laser Gates more recently which I also thought was a great game.

[Identify This Game!]

Friend of mine is trying to track down a game he remembers on the 8-bits...

 

He asked me via IMs and this is what he wrote:

 

"Do you remember the name of the Atari 800 game where you mowed the lawn (or something like that) where you essentially painted the screen?"

 

"I just remember some game where you were essentially painting the whole board green and won when it was all filled in."

 

"It was kinda like Qix where you were avoiding attacks but it was very 'fill in the grid'"

 

 

Any ideas at all???

 

Thanks!

 

~Scott

 

Sounds like Hover Bovver

http://www.atarimani...ovver_2519.html

 

That's what sprang to my mind, as well. Jeff Minter did some great games, IMO.

[Australian Colecovision Championship - 1982 (The Real King of Kong)]

Probably the second most embarrassing video I have been in, at least I didnt come across as bad as the guy who wore a gold cape and claimed to be Australia's first video games Super Hero.

 

lol! and he wasn't 14 either.

 

Thanks for uploading that. It was great to watch.

 

 

Does anyone know if those CBS displays were available at stores in Europe?

 

Off the top of my head, I don't remember coming across them in London, myself, but it was a long time ago.

[Text Adventure Games]

Ah right, I should use the search button once in a while. Couldn't have been overlooked by AA. I'm only half way in and enjoying the nostalgia of it.

 

I'm glad you brought it up again. I found it a while ago on youtube while I was looking for IF stuff and I've only watched the first 15 minutes or so. I liked what I've seen so far and definitely want to watch the rest of it when I get a chance.

 

 

It definitely gave me an appreciation for the size of Zork, and made me not feel so bad about never finishing the game.

 

It's discussed pretty well in this thread: http://www.atariage...._1?do=findComment&comment=2089839

 

Infocom (and level 9) did some great stuff, IMO. thanks for posting that link. I found that thread before I signed up but I forgot about it with all the other threads going on now lol

[Imagic Round 2]

Too bad they didn't survive , they made awesome games. I magic is one of my favorites publisher.

 

I'm afraid I'm not up on the history of Imagic but I would definitely second this: Star Voyager and Atlantis used to be two of my favourite games on the 2600. Laser Gates is a great game as well, IMO.

[mostlyharmless collection]

This is a great collection! I especially liked the photo of the two Commodore computers. Thanks for sharing it.

 

The nice thing about those is that I _guess_ it's the only SuperPET with swedish keyboard left in existence. Serialnumber 9.

 

that's really cool. I didn't notice the extra 'o' and 'a's when I first posted.