Flack

Did anyone happen to save any pictures being broadcast by the webcam?

There is a picture of the unit (and the screen you asked about) in my OVGE pictoral review here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=71501

These were the final two pictures I took while standing in my booth, looking out across the sea of people. Just like every year, I thought I had a picture of every booth and now looking back I can see that I missed a lot of groups and people. I have a few minutes of camcorder footage that my wife shot, so hopefully I can get that online shortly as well. I almost forgot to mention -- OVGE once again had drawings throughout the day, and I won one! I ended up winning one of those new super cool Famiclones (the USA version, that uses actual NES controllers!), a complete set of the Burger King Activision handhelds, a $20 gift certificate from Vintage Stock, a Digital Press Advanced Guide, and a Yars' Revenge cart autographed by Howard Scott Warshaw. How cool is all that?!?!?! As always I had a blast. It is always fun to get together, play games, and talk to people about playing games. Thanks to everyone who spent a moment (or more) of their time chatting with me, including Earl "Phosphor Dot Fossils" Green, Brian "Icbrkr" and Ginger Green, Mr. and Mrs. MegaManFan, AltairBoy, SteveW, Jeff Cooper, Al and Andrew Davie, Greg (2600Lives), Jason Simpson, Brad "PureEnergy" Prillwitz, Max and Dustin, Josh Risner, and anyone else I'm forgetting at the moment. And of course, super extra special thanks to Jesse Hardesty and his family for putting on the best darn convention Oklahoma has ever seen.

The Joust cocktail made it back again, along with several other vintage (and very nice) video games. There were very few moments while this machine was unoccupied. SteveW talks with MegaManFan (in blue). MMF's table was split between his love for MegaMan and his love for the Atari 2600. MMF ran a DVD video which had MMF footage combined with a rockin' audio track. There's only one of these, and I have it. Thanks again, man. My son is watching it right now! GameRush's Halo 2 tournament brought in the hardcore gamers. I got shot just by standing too close to the televisions. Trade-N-Games hade a HUGE amount of stuff packed into the corner. Lots and lots of boxed games and systems. I brought basically four plastic tubs of stuff and three televisions, and I am sore this morning from moving it all. I would hate to imagine how these guys moved all this stuff to and from the show. Cecil Thompson's collection, including this beautiful Atari 2600 kiosk, towered in the corner of the room. More of Cecil's systems. If you had Pac-Man fever and it was driving you crazy, Jeff Cooper's table was the place to be. Not only did Mr. Cooper have a nice selection of Atari games, he also had this killer collection of Pac-Collectables. His son is also a Star Wars fan, and spent a lot of time at my table. Scott Huggins brought this awesome mini-MAME Cabinet which certainly attracted a lot of attention throughout the show. Scott programmed the ColecoVision homebrew port of Astro Invader, and Scott had the cabinet there to show the comparison between his version and the original. Unfortunately, most people just wanted to play MAME games on it. I can relate -- I had my Xbox out to show Star Wars games and came back more than once to find people had rebooted it, got into the emulators and were playing various other games. (continued)

The OVGE tournament had people lined up to play games both old and ... older. GameXchange had some cool swag to show and play, including those new USA model Famiclones which finally accept original NES controllers. I had planned on buying one at the show, but as luck would have it I ended up winning one in a drawing! More on that in a bit. Brad Prillwitz always has killer stuff to show off. This picture of these flat panel monitors don't really convey just how beautiful they are in real life! I played some two-player space game (I forgot the name of it) on the Jaguar on these babies and learned that in space, there is no mercy. After getting shot in the back several times, I moved on. You want retro? Check out Brad's Atari Lynx collection. There were also two Lynx's here, hooked together for some head to head action. Earl "Phosphor Dot Fossils" Green usually corners the market in "old" cool stuff, but this year he had enough newer stuff to attract people from both crowds! Earl not only has a collection of vintage computers and gaming consoles, but vintage televisions as well. You think you know old? Earl knows old. I don't know how much it will take, but some day I will own that PSX joystick. Earl's mammoth pastel joystick panel gets some lovin' from a random Dig Dug fan. Earl "Phosphor Dot Fossils" (center), with co-conspirators Kent and Mrs. Dot Fossils. Another shot of some of Earl's booth. Brian "Icbrkr" Green and his wife Ginger had an awesome import theme going on, with several games running for people to play. Icbrkr also ran the official OVGE webcam directly from his table, thanks to the hotel's wireless internet access! Ginger and Icbrkr look on as Jason Simpson throws down a round of Mr. Driller. (continued)

Originally posted on robohara.com -- cross posted on Digital Press, Atari Age, and Particles. June 18th marked the third annual Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition (OVGE), held in the Tulsa Mariott Southern Hills Hotel's ballroom. Dozens of vendors and exhibitors showed off thousands of games and systems to hundreds of gamers both young and old. [ Pre-Show Excitement ] Last year I decided I had so much fun exhibiting a table that I would do it again this year. Phosphor Dot Fossils came up with the perfect theme for my table this year -- Star Wars. It was perfect timing, due to the release of the last Star Wars movie (Revenge of the Sith) less than a month ago. PDF and I began planning and working on the theme, but unfortunately my wife threw a wrench into our plans. She's pregnant, and our ultrasound predicted the the due date as (you guessed it) June 18th. I sadly relinquished my tables and any hope of attending OVGE. On our next trip to the doctor, he changed his mind and moved our "due date" to the 4th of July. That meant I could now attend OVGE, but my tables had already been resold. Instead, this year I would be attend OVGE as just a spectator. I was looking forward to doing that for a change. I got my camcorder and digital camera ready for the show. As fate would have it, someone ELSE cancelled (the day before the show -- tacky), leaving Jesse "Crossbow" Hardesty (OVGE organizer) with empty tables. Jesse called me at home, asking me if I could still put together a table.I didn't get the message for a couple of hours, and by the time I was able to get back with Jesse, it was 6pm. I decided to take the tables, only 15 hours before the show's doors opened. I frantically began throwing systems, games, and random Star Wars collectibles into tubs and loading them into my minivan. I finished loading around 3am. That left me two hours to sleep before making the two hour drive to Tulsa, which would give me just under an hour to get everything set up. No problem! Here's the minivan, circa 3am. Tubs, a dolly, sacks of crap and two lone helmets (Stormtrooper and Boba Fett) filled up the back of of the van. Yoda, strapped in and ready for the ride. [ OVGE Review ] Unfortunately my wife and I didn't arrive at the show until about 8:10am, with doors set to open at 9. I ran into several people who came by and said "Flack! Hi, I'm ..." but I was in such a hurry that I didn't have much of a chance to stop and talk to people at that point. Fortunately for me, Icbrkr had already set his table up the night before so he and his wife Ginger gave me a hand in carrying piles of crap in from the van and getting everything set up. Here's how my table (with the red table cloth) ended up. I dug some old Star Wars cutouts out of the garage which brought a lot of attention to the table. On the left hand side of my table I had my Atari 2600 (Vader model, of course) with all four official Star Wars carts. I also had Ewok Adventure on a flash cart as well. I had an Atari joystick hooked up, but most people who played the system swapped the joystick out with my Genesis controller. In the middle of my table I had my SNES hooked up with all three Super Star Wars games, and the new Jakks Star Wars joystick. On the right hand of the table I had all three current gen systems (Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox) with a variety of Star Wars games rotating through them. Lego Star Wars got the most game play, followed by Rogue Squadron. The table was covered with almost every Star Wars console game, the Star Wars helmets, and of course Yoda which got a lot of attention. The far end of my table had kids battling the Empire in Lego Star Wars (Xbox), with Boba Fett overseeing the festivities. Here is me with my "Yoda balloon hat", courtest of Balloon Boy. Ah, Balloon Boy. I don't know who he really is, but Balloon Boy (a name I gave him) is a guy who comes to OVGE, wanders around and makes balloon animals for people and kids. As strange as the idea sounds, the guy is really talented. For the record, I wore this Yoda hat for exactly ten seconds (long enough to take a picture) and then stuck it on the Stormtrooper hat. Late in the day, I had a five-year-old kid come by and play on the Jakks stick for almost half an hour. I awarded him the "Jedi of the Day" award and gave him the hat, which he proudly wore the rest of the day. The Mario balloon hat was equally impressive. Here are Albert and Andrew Davie manning the AtariAge table. I had not met Andrew in person before and was surprised when I first heard his Australian accent! Andrew and I talked a bit about his love of programming Atari 2600 games. Later that day, someone informed me that Andrew worked on several classic console games as well including the Three Stooges game! It's a good thing I didn't know that in advance, as I probably would have spent the rest of the day following him around asking him questions about it. In the foreground of this picture you can see some of the various books AA had for sale. Just a collection of some of AA's wares they had available. AA's display looked more professional than some of the actual stores' tables. Forum member SteveW casts away at Go Fish, one of the games AA had for sale at OVGE. I can't decide which is more wonderful -- a little kid (background) playing Atari, or that many Commodore monitors all together in one place. The Atari Flashback 2.0 made its debut at OVGE 2005. It's a nice little piece of hardware, although apparently this unit was a beta unit and only contained 10 of the 40 promised games. Unfortunately Curt was not at the show -- I was looking forward to meeting him after seeing him interviewed on the BBS Documentary DVD (bbsdocumentary.com). (continued)

If some diskettes are working and others aren't, it could mean a lot of things. The drive could just be slightly out of alignment, which can cause some disks to work and others not to. Also, if the disks are old original ones chances are they're approaching 20 years old. They'll go bad eventually. All the other suggestions in this thread were good ones. 1, clean the drive. 2, try and realign it. Then 3, look for another drive. I, like Ze_ro, have over half a dozen of them lying around. I've got one permanently attached to an old 486 for disk transfers, another one hooked up to the 64 on my coffee table, and three or four more out in the garage waiting to get rotated into service. Most of them still have their $1.98 or $2.98 prices written in grease pencil on the top of them.

I have my old light sixer from when I was a kid still hooked up and going. I decided ti pick up one of all the variations I could find in the wild. Now I also have: 1 Heavy Sixer 1 Light Sixer 1 Woody 4 Switch 1 Darth Vader 4 Switch I Jr. Short Rainbow 1 Jr. Long Rainbow All of these were picked up from thrift stores and garage sales for less than $5 each. Most of them were a buck.

Well if you quit buying stuff made by Chnese people, you're going to severely limit your game collection! The Gamepark 32, or GP32, is a cool little device if you're into emulation. There are a lot of cool emulators, like NES, SNES, Genesis, and my favorite, the Commodore 64. There are a couple of Atari 2600 emulators, but if I remember correctly it runs at about 90% speed. There's also a perfect Atari ST emulator, and the new MAME port is really good as well. It's not as straight forward as a regular console. It will take some tinkering to get things to work, so if you're not that kind of person you probably won't enjoy it.

OKC to Tulsa is like 110 miles if you take the turnpike which is the way I go ... lots of wide open road and 10 over is no big deal. Dallas is about 3.5 hours from here, so yeah, I'd say 4.5 to 5 hours is a reasonable estimate. I can't give a good estimate from here to Austin. The only time I've done that drive (to pick up a Heavy Barrel arcade cabinet) turned out to be on OU/Texas weekend. Any plans I had of making good time were foiled by the 2 hours I spent parked on I-35 somewhere near Dallas. That was a fun trip, btw. The kid who sold me the cab gave me horrible directions. We had to use my GPS to find the house. It poured down rain the whole time, so we had to stop at a Lowes and get tarps and ropes. Then when we got to the house, the kid turned out to be 17 and his parents had no idea that he was selling (or had already sold!) the cabinet online. They were NOT happy. Always an adventure ...

The problem with a MAME front end is you run out of buttons for features in a hurry. On the one I wrote, up and down on the joystick of course moves you through the list, while left and right jump forward and backward 20 games. Player 1 start works as Enter and Player 2 start works as ESC. I suppose you could code in something like shift+right = jump to the beginning of the next letter, that wouldn't be that hard to incorporate.

I need one to that says: "Flack" Thank you, drive thru.

Are you asking whether the experience at home is the same, or the actual software is the same? The home conversions of many home arcade games aren't conversions at all but the actual games themselves. So on those, yeah, they're the same. Of course that hasn't always been the same (see: Atari 2600's Pac-Man). Each version of gaming (arcades vs home consoles) has their advantages and disadvantages.

It's too bad you missed the auction. Dead generic cabinets often sell for $25 or less, depending on how complete they are. For those with the woodworking experience of you or I, they make a nice starting point.

Yes I have been rained on before.

Wow okay, so I'm late to the party. As many of you know I had to give up my tables this year as my wife's original due date was the same day as OVGE. The due date has been pushed back to the 4th of July, so it looks like I'll be able to come visit again this year after all -- only this time as a stinkin' paying attendee! After skimming this thread, I picked out a couple of things I wanted to comment on. Beer here is 3.2. You can get beer some convenient stores, but not liquor. Liquor stores close at 9pm M-Sat and are closed Sundays. Open container in the car means DUI and jail. Don't try it. There are no White Castles in Oklahoma. The closest ones are in Kansas City, MO I believe. I know every time we drive to Chicago we stop in St. Louis and get some sliders. As far as food is concerned, you are in a populated area and can pretty much find a restaurant in any direction. Vespertillo, Nine Juan Juan and I set out after the show last year and found some random Mexican place that turned out to be pretty good. I'm pretty sure there are McDonalds, Sonics, and all types of fast food joints within a block of the hotel. As for the casino ... they all have slot machines but they're not real slot machines, they're pull tabs so don't bother. From what I've heard the card games are on the level. Also from what I understand they do not serve alcohol in the casinos here, and from the times my wife's gone she says you're doing good if you can get a Coke. I JUST made that drive last weekend from Oklahoma City, going through Tulsa. From here to Tulsa is about 1:45, and the entire drive was just shy of 4 hours, so I would say basically two hours exactly. Let's git 'er done! As someone else mentioned, you will stick out as a big sore thumb. I don't know anyone who wears a cowboy hat, boots, or even owns a big belt buckle (that's not to say you won't see them adorned by some Tulsa locals). I'll be the big guy with the shirt that says FLACK on the back.

Both Icbrkr and my pictures of the day ended up in this thread over at DP. http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61375 To summarize, everybody had a great time and I'm sure we'll do it again in the fall.

Hey, long time no update! Work's been busy and I lost a chunk of code due to a stupid computer crash, but I am still working on this project. I recently threw a copy of this program on my MAME cabinet and began discovering all the quirks I didn't like about it. The one thing I liked the least was the fact that the listbox showed the rom names. It's really quick and really easy to set up, but not very user friendly to look at. Also, if you're using it for mame, a lot of the file names are not very easy to decipher. After much struggling, I've ended up adding a feature which now shows the friendly names in the listbox. It wasn't easy! So now if you have pacman.bin as a rom name but in the INI file you have something like "Pac-Man © NAMCO", it will show that instead of simply showing the rom name. Like most other features of FFE, it's completely optional -- if a friendly name doesn't exist in an INI file, it will still show the rom name (now with the extension stripped off, for easier viewing). I messed around with having FFE play background music but in the end it was just a bit much overkill. Maybe I'll revisit it someday in the future. I am working on the resizing issue this morning, so we'll see how that goes. My cabinet runs in 800x600 and that's what I've set the background templates up for. Maybe I'll make some more for different resolutions if this works.

I used to work at a Pizza Inn here in Oklahoma and I remember we had one right by the front door (Arkanoid, I think). It was popular with the kids because parents would come in and order a pizza to go or something and the kids would play a quick game while the parents were waiting. I picked up a Nintendo VS. Cocktail a while back (I guess it's considered a cocktail?) with a monitor on each side. I picked it up thinking I was saving room -- ha! You guys are right, it takes up the space of 2 1/2 to 3 games.

Dragon's Lair was the first one I ever saw. It was also the first game I ever saw that made you pay to continue even if you didn't die. I remember watching this guy play the game halfway through and then a screen popped up that said something to the effect of, "Great, you're halfway there -- insert another 50 cents to continue!"

Sorry, I can't remember who said they were looking for a cabinet for a MAME project in Houston ... here's one I ran across on eBay. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...6177649904&rd=1 Dead game, currently at $11.50 with 2 days left.

I think what you want is a front end -- check out this thread (http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=66236) or just do a search for front ends ... that's one of the goals of the one I'm working on, to make it compatible with as many emulators as possible!

http://www.robohara.com/albums/04302005_auction (I tried to post the pictures here but it keeps telling me no more than 10 pictures per post allowed and I didn't feel like re-editing the entire thing).

After OVGE this year, it'll be two rugrats -- make sure the cab has Super Mario Bros on it, that's my son's favorite game. He's been able to beat 1-1 for the past month or so on one man, last night he beat 1-2 for the first time. I wonder if Twin Galaxies has a record for the youngest player to beat the entire game? I am going to an arcade auction tomorrow, I will see if they have any cheap coin doors there (sometimes they go for $5-$10, and just need to be sanded/painted to look new again). I'm also going to see if they have any dead cabs cheap (the wheels are churning ...)

If you're looking to recoup any of your expenditures so far, I'm looking for a Double Dragon PCB ... Congrats on kicking off the project!