macgoo

Nintendo hardware is the most overpriced underpowered IN THE WORLD CONSISTENTLY and their games look and play in a fashion only suitable for mentally disabled people or small children so they can go and die. And who can forget their bastard console? The N64 with cartridges...what a joke just so they could keep tight control on software for their shit console and avoid cheaper CDs that THE WHOLE WORLD WANTED. Software had grown out of the capacity of one man bedroom coding once you got past early 8bit computers like the VIC20 or even the VCS. The Amiga was a classic case of needing 3 people (code, graphics, audio) and this is why so many 8 bit icons like Jeff Minter produced such worthless turds on the Amiga. Is there a solution? Nope because 'indie games' like Super Meatboy look WORSE than classic C64 games, cost more on Xbox Live and are just pure talentless shit sorry. And there is a snobery to it now, Rob Hubbard earned peanuts for some of the most iconic music (better than anything Nintendo ever produced in game soundtracks too) and yet today just being able to boot up an XBLA dev system geeks feel they need to earn 5-10 national minimum wage All a bunch of spoilt pricks walking round in sandals and curry stained T-shirts today. There is no Tony Crowther's out their, they all bitch and moan about Windows APIs and DX10 etc but I remember clearly a time when coders earning peanuts EXCEEDED the perceived limits of the hardware in both execution bandwidth/graphics capabilities and audio sophistication attainable. Now thanks to Microcock Winblows syndrome faster code = faster CPU plz k thanx mr engineer LOL the losers.

Will they include an updated version of NEC PC Engine's Toilet Kids though? LOL Seriously, all this motion control and webcam stuff is crap. First we had colour from black and white, Then we had custom logic for scrolling/moveable objects/sophisticated sound and a doubling of resolution. Then we had superlative multiparallax 2D colour graphics AND incredible sound hardware. Then we had proper textured 3D polygon games that didn't look crap like Starglider 2 on ST/Amiga etc. Then we had incredible persistent worlds with destruction with huge teams of online players like in the Battlefield PC games. And you know what? Until the sell me headmounted tracking helmets with surround sound and stereoscopic vision so I can 'look up' and in Battlefield 3 I see the sky and the missiles heading towards me and then 'look back' and again see the view behind my character in the gameworld they can shove it. Sadly though with the market saturated at the time of PS2/360 Nintendo wheeled out yet another low quality product technically speaking and sold it to a bunch of single mums and chavs who never leave the house in the form of the PS2-o-clock graphics Wii and that god awful inaccurate woolly controller *bletch* The next big thing will be whatever expands the console market by yet another 50-100% (which is basically what Sony did with PS1 and Nintendo did with Wii, their sales were always in addition to the existing console purchasers demographic) Instead of making an Asteroids game that looks like the CGI sequences of the Battlestar Galactica TV show episode "SCAR" and head tracking helmet and proper controller we will probably get some more bullshit, maybe even a "my first baby" simulator for teenage saps to pretend to cradle their virtual baby and wipe his virtual ass in front of their Kinect camera? LOL I weep for the future actually.

Does it run Android? Most Android (and iPhone and Win mobile for that fact) games look and play WORSE than mid 80s 8bit computer games so I don't see the point. And programming Android/iOS/WinM games is not exactly the same as typing in games from the C+VG magazine era either so writing games in some obscure difficult to read language vs writing Amiga games in Blitz Basic 2.1 leaves a LOT to be desired. What really would be great is something with the power (and popularity) of PS3/360 but with the elegant properly multitasking (not that Windows/OSX cock you have to endure today thanks) OS environment equivalent to an Acorn/Amiga 32bit computer in the early 90s and a stupendously well ported version of Blitz Basic 3D and 2D as per not so long ago on x86 PCs IMO. *meh*

I think MSX1 is the only early 8bit computer to get a conversion of Vulcan Venture (remix of it?) which alone makes it worth having for the novelty factor You could get some inspiration from the MSX magazines too, or just flick through hundreds of screenshots and see what peeks your interest. Sadly some complete asswipe locked uploads of MSX magazine scans in english language on Scribd.com so you have to risk overheating your CPU to read them on that horrible Flash based PDF viewing website (Flash websites are terrible but this site is the worst use of Flash coding I have ever seen, even 2ghz is not enough to read a f^&%£ing PDF file dear god!) I that site gets DOS attacked to death, horrible horrible website *bletch*

I think the interfaces that allow gigabytes of games on SD cards or hard drives for ST/Amiga games (+ converted games like WHDload files etc) are probably at the top of my list too, making gaming as convenient as emulator based gaming but allowing you to retain the original hardware (which is always something special).

One of the most underrated machines ever available was the Memotech MTX500 (and then the MTX512 later with the option of 512kb RAM expansion). This machine had pretty much all the hardware of an MSX1 computer BUT it was not register compatible or cycle exact as it used an even faster processor of 4.1mhz not 3.5mhz Z80. If you've seen the film Weird Science you've seen the Memotech MTX computer and the FDX-1 dual 5.25" disk drive by the way. Obviously had they used an Amiga 1000 they would have got a much less slutty more attractive woman than that bimbo LOL OK so forget all that technical mumbo jumbo for now what does the machine have apart from the ability to out do MSX1 Japanese games? (forget the UK MSX Specbum direct ports type JUNK!). Well the actual computer, it is a very nice aluminium case in black with a full keyboard (ie numpad included). The first thing you notice is the quality, the weight and the finish is incredible and then you use the keyboard and to be honest it is professional quality (as is the Acorn BBC Micro computer) which is superior to EVERYTHING else of the time. Secondly it has many many industry standard ports on it like a standard Centronics Parallel port for printers as well as regular joystick ports. Finally the computer peripherals and documentation is great too as is the built in BASIC and also Machine Code Monitor terminal. Very few games for the machine but even in the UK you will be lucky to find one game for sale on ebay worldwide. Very rare as machines are hardly ever up for sale. It was a great machine that nobody ever owned. Hardly ever covered in even iconic magazines like Computer and Video Games with program listings let alone commercial games. If only it was launched a year earlier things may have turned out very different. I can't be the only person here who has even used this machine.

PCs are a pile of shit and anything before Pentium 1 and PCI are doorstops only idiots with blinkers on bought instead of Commodore or Acorn SUPERIOR 32bit computers. Try playing Super Stardust 96 on a 486 vs a 14mhz 020 A1200 Amiga LOL There is also the fact that a PC is a PC, nobody gives a shit apart from isolated PCs that were not the size of a beer cooler and the styling of a breeze block (like the Atari PC1 or Commodore PC-1) to be honest and they all run that piece of shit Microsoft OS even DOS will boot on an i7 *shudder* Apple as shit as it was will hold it's value more as a retro machine IMO

bas-ditta.info His site is super-goony looking, but he is very legit. Visiting Japan is a sure-fire way to score the best MSX deals, because alot of shops don't list online. That's a hard option for most. Checking Yahoo.JP daily is a great way to find good ones. Hey you Arkhan from Lemon64 buddy? As others have said technically not a huge reason to buy one over another model of MSX1 but I would try for an MSX2 myself as they have a nice look and there's some nice MSX2 enhanced/specific games to be honest. Also do NOT buy MSX games coded in the UK, they are disgusting Spectrum ports that look shit. At the time based on the turds UK software houses put out I thought the MSX was more or less a Sinclair Spectrum (Timex) type computer with a sound chip and nothing more. After playing through many nice overseas titles I can see how wrong I was and I feel cheated.

Elite on the BBC (Not Acorn Electron) is an interesting one as it has a faster CPU than the Atari (only by 0.20mhz mind) but also has a very fast graphics subsystem for just pure hires screen writes. Actually apart from the horrible BBC palette it's not a bad machine. Certainly pisses all over the Sinclair and Amstrad 8bits. Elite on the C64 is pure dirt, too slow and hence a load of steaming pile of flaming dog poo in a paper bag. Actually I would ONLY play Elite on the BBC out of all the versions released. As for games that I wish were converted to the 800XL of the time would probably be Nemesis (Gradius) and Salamander. Both were converted to the usual 3 suspects but nothing else (not even ST or Amiga actually) and they are both great shmups with the best gameplay of the mid 80s. Would be nice to see them on the A8. Salamander would be tough though, technically and artistically very challenging to convert to a pleasing 8 bit game.

I kind of remember a company used to sell a kit for an internal IDE adaptor and brackets to fit a notebook hard drive inside the ST's case. I think it was from ICD? Anyway is this the only way to do this or has someone got a different more modern way of using a HD within the case? (not interested in SD/MMC type card solution)

Many many arcade machines used the 16mhz chip so should be plenty floating about as spares still.

Do you mean to launch stuff from the host (i.e. "H:")? I see no reason why not. I mean will we be able to use it for everything, including launching XEXs/ATRs loaded into the emulator's disk drive(s) just like running games on the ST via GEM or Amiga via Workbench etc.

No I did indeed own an ST in 1985 and still own an ST, Mega and other bits and bobs. My point is one of fact, compared to hardware projects for other platforms, and also home brew game development, I see a lot less activity on forums worldwide. I'm not talking about how many people talk about the machine I am talking about how many people do things in the real world for the machine (new hardware projects for classic machines, new software on a major scale etc) Are people still making accelerators for the ST? Are people making things to interface an ST keyboard to a USB socket to build a Mini ITX PC inside an ST/Mega case easily and use the same keyboard and floppy drive with PC emulator to run apps? How many games are currently in development for the ST? How many groups still write demos every year without fail on the machine? Anyone working on drop in replacement ST motherboards with 16mhz 68k CPUs and USB ports and built in IDE adaptors etc etc? The answer is not encouraging to these questions. Nothing to do with what I think of the machine personally, I can't magic this enthusiasm up for stuff like this out of thin air. People either do this for the machine or they do not. It is pure fact, the numbers don't lie, and whilst the ST didn't sell that differently to the XL/XE/800/400 computers it receives a far less passionate dedication in any visible form around the world. So yes, relatively speaking, very few people are doing things for the ST now, didn't say people don't still talk about it or post messages relating to the machine on here and Atari-Forum etc.

I couldn't get a single commercial non RPG/Adventure game to work in mono mode on STEem so never mind. Starglider 1 and 2 are just plain broken if run in mono mode for me.

This was around the time of the 1040STF ie before the 520STFM and they did intend to sell such machines, however as a 4mb ST's cost is mainly the RAM chips they decided they could offer the Mega ST instead for a similar price and have a less home computer looking product for business. They were also going to put the blitter into these 4160 and 2080STF machines so I guess reworking the motherboard they thought might as well do it properly and have something businesses would not reject (given the cost of 4mb RAM it was never going to be a home computer). I could be wrong but the first Mega ST was indeed the 4mb no? This was followed later by the Mega 2 and the Mega 1 machines later on.

VIC20. Which stopped working after 9 weeks so I swapped it for a C64.

Microsoft is the only bad thing that ever happened in computing, 2nd worse is Apple.

Blitz BASIC/AMOS was the way to go, anything before that is pretty boring and not A/V centric like the old days. Also without incentives for people to write arcade game listing like in the 8 bit day of C64/Spectrum/BBC in Computer and Video Games magazine it didn't matter what the BASIC was like. I draw the line at the original Atari ST basic from 1985 though *bletch* although obviously they had FAST BASIC and STOS too.

Without emulation this underwhelming console will soon disappear into oblivion, the raving Jag fan boys should remember that

I get the impression that very few people still care about the ST the same way they do about other computers they owned in the 80s etc. I see little hardware projects (FPGA Arcade and Minimig Amiga based FPGA projects could very easily be adapted to host the ST emulation as the 68k is already done the hard work is finished) and never hear of much homebrew activity. For someone who knows about programming FPGA cores this would be a good project. The shifter and YM chip etc would take much less time to do than the poor old Amiga Agnus/Daphne/Paula/Gary chips took to emulate in FPGA.

Usefulness and price are not exactly bed partners for ebay sales prices, look just how high the price of those pathetic Sinclair QL machines are on fleabay Horrid machines that were unusable even in 1984 let alone today when microdrives are not sold anymore and all the software is hoarded by some cantankerous old nobheads trying to sell you shit games from 1985 rather than letting them go freeware in the public domain like many iconic coders on 8bit machines have done like A Crowther and J Minter etc :/ It may well sell for thousands but I don't know (which was the gist of my post)

Thanks that's what I was looking for Not home and dry though as sadly, as someone stated in there, the crackers don't make mono friendly cracktros for mono friend games (this is why I HATE cracked games in my collection but sadly sometimes that's all there is)

But that is exactly what I am looking for, commercial non text adventure/strategy games sold for the ST that worked in monochrome and color mode, like Starglider which you mention. Didn't mean mono only games, that is something I can search for on Atari Legend, however I can't search for games which just support mono as well as color mode on there.

For those who are not in the UK, or even then don't even know, there was a program called Micro Live which generally fapped off to the Acorn BBC Micro A LOT but they did do a two part report on the world famous athlete Brian Jacks and his bid to settle on a specific home computer circa 1983/84. In these two 5-10 minute spots he is seen choosing a machine with his family and then his experiences unboxing and setting up an 800XL (600XL?) with his family and using it. There was also another one involving the British magician Paul Daniels which I have never found archived but this episode of Micro Live but he was talking about how he chose an Atari 800 and was saying he was tinkering with programming by typing in games listings from magazines and then editing bits here and there to see what happened in order to try and learn BASIC programming.

I tried looking on Atari-Legend but they only have exclusive monochrome game search function search not mono compatible as was hinted at in an old thread? Also I don't want to know about PD games or shareware, only proper full price games sold in shops. Not bothered if they are mono only or mono and colour. What I do want though is arcade/action games not adventures or strategy games. There probably isn't that many so I was going to do youtube videos of them