Andromeda Stardust

I am perfectly content without a box. Be sure to ship them in something sturdy though.

Dangit... I remember now. Both have "Jin" in their username and My Little Pony avatars. Jin and I go back a ways in forum discussions. Sorry for the mixup.

Bob, I wanted to say I think your game is a work of art and will help preserve history. Video / Pin hybrids are a rare breed; so glad to see this ported. Although I might download the rom for safe keeping, I pledge not to actually play this game until I have the final cartridge in my hands... I hope you are happy Kurt, as it appears your "wish" has come true. FYI, Bob is not a genie in a magic lamp... Not without a flux capacitor...

Wow... First off, I am sorry that you feel this way. We are all eternally grateful for your contributions in this project. Please do not ruin it for all involved plus fans who want to pay for a cart, by withdrawing your support in the 11th hour.

Nice, cart looks phenominal. Congrats Bob! Also thank you for adding back in pin only / maze only modes. More ways to play is always a good thing. I am always happy to buy games at the AA store. And I don't have ways of playing ROMs of 7800 games currently, but I've bought many physical games I have tested out on Harmony. I respect the decision regardless. Homebrew piracy is low enough. Pirates who build games to sell without permission are scumbags.

Man, that sucks for both of you. I wonder how many more got DOAs? Hyperkin's quality testing department must be nonexistent... And the real pity is the paddle design is dead simple. A 1Mohm linear pot, large 2" knob, and a button. Not really a whole lot you could screw up. I could easily build a pair of paddles with supplies from guitar center (since Radio Shack is no longer in business, they're the only B&M chain store I know of that sells pots). The issue isn't fabbing a new pair of aftermarket pots though. Even well worn pots clean up with contact cleaner, compressed air, and dielectric grease. It's that the real Atari uses an RC time constant to measure the pot's travel. The encoder in the Retron77 uses some other method to read the resistance values and isn't nearly as stable.

And your custom one button "Pro" 2600 fight joystick is safe as well too. That thing is a beast!

Is there a specific reason for removing the "pinball only" mode? I think would be fun to have the option of "maze only" and "pinball only". Maybe hide them in a debug menu (press some combination of inputs on boot to unlock). Very cool, and I can't wqit to play this fantastic and historic game on my 7800. Are all the Pacman games now accounted for? We have Pacman Collection with all Pacman and Ms Pacman variants, Super Pacman, Jr Pacman, and Baby Pacman, as well as historucal curiosity Carzy Otto. And yes, well there's also Pacland, but that's a spinoff. I also have Pacland on Famicom, Lynx, and Turbografx. Job well done, and by far your most ambitious project to date!

I'll bite. When I picked up the 6" My Arcade Galaga and PAcman at Walmart last summer, I tried to open it up and expose the wires so that I could solder in a 4-pole dip switch to mod it and unlock the other games. Additionally, I was going to wire the unused Select button to the fourth DIP switch so that I could unlock the multiplayer modes (despite not having any way to actually control the second player. I used the solder iron to knock off the 0 ohm smt resistor, then soldered my wires to the tiny pads and attempted to hot glue over them so the wires would not tug. Before the glue set, I pressed down on the 24-ga wire so it would clear the back of the screen after reassembly, and "pop", the pad lifted right off of the pcb. I then traced the wire down and attempted to scrape away the enamel so I could reattach the lead to no avail. My toggle switch to flip between Games didn't work. I took the soldering iron and detached all of the wires. Luckily the solder tab that enables Galaga was still intact, so I placed tiny bridge across it and closed up the case. Galaga booted when I turned it on. So while I botched the mod attempt, I was able to restore it to working condition...

Agree with goldleader. I would rather wait for perfection than get something less than perfect now.

JAnuaary 14th is today, also my mom's Birthday! Where can I preorder, or is it still delayed a bit due to development issues?

Why? It's the most beautiful 7800 game ever made! As for Virtua Racing: yes, the chessboard pattern dither is highly noticeable even over composite. Accept dithering for what it is. I imagine there will be a pixel blend option on the Mega SG. I would probably just leave mine off. You can also increase the softness dial on CRTs and HDTVs alike, but this will likely make other games look bad. I don't even have a display that supports Svideo anymore, though my old HDTV did. On my Super Retro Trio, I immediately noticed the "vertical scanline" effect in Sonic games. I actually thought it was quite striking and beautiful.

The four way joystick in Centipede restricts it to four way movement, however remove the joystick restriction and you will find the ROM itself restricts to four way movement, as proven by playing the ROM (graciously provided to be me by an unnamed member on this forum) on emulation or real hardware such as via PowerPak. Very stupid they did not just get Famicom or NES Millipede, seeing as how that ROM plays infinietly better than the 7800 Flashback ports. Then this glitchfest that actually had working diagonals. Why did they remove diagonal movement in the final finished ROM?

Amazing! :grin: :grin: :thumbsup: I do collect any and all pinball related games. This will be my second Pinball themed homebrew, after 8-bit Xmas 2016 from RetroUSB. Pacman plus Pinball? Best of both worlds, although I'll admit the ghost behavior is very... odd ...in maze mode. I am glad you included the option to revert classic behavior.

Second 7800, or third? Just kidding love you man!

It can't be as bad as the Tiny Arcade Galaga port. I've got a standup Galaga 1UP cab but I'm still collecting all of these small packaged goodies. Remember the Micro fun Ms Pacman is one of the best Ms Pacman ports released so far, however they got the fruit order mixed up in the game but not the manual, and other weirdness. The NES port of Galaga was quite good, though the bullet audio exhibits a glitch in the NOAC. Honestly most of the bitd NES ports are more accurate than the embedded stuff Basic Fun and Tiny Arcade are selling now, the Basic Fun ports generally being superior to super Impulse / Tiny Arcade. Also, My Arcade Gaming Micro Player is Namco version, not the superior Tengen port which was also re-ported to 16-bit platforms. I'll still buy it though. I'm a sucker for this stuff... And definitely Bubble Bobble too, even though it's single player only...

I love how the screen is stretched to hell and back. Couldn't get a decent 4:3 screen? Do they still make those anymore?

I remember a thread titles "Is Sears the Next ToysRUs or RadioShack?" Perhaps Gamestop is next. It would actually be a good thing IMO if Game Stop fell out of existence and let Mom 'n' Pop shops take over the redistribution of used physical games. I agree somewhat, physical is useless if you have to download an update to play the game. However, I will continue to support physical releases for as long as they are available. Digital games becoming vaporware overnight is about as brilliant a concept as chucking film reels in the trash after it's run in the theaters during the silent film era. Maybe the top 2% of movies from that time period got saved. Archivists interested in studying the evolution of video game history are going to discover a huge gap in available games between the cart/disc era and the DRM downloads only era. Potentially this could also happen to Netflix originals and other streaming service exclusive content. Some day, Netflix will cease to exist and all of those films could get lost because digitally pristine physical or DRM free digital backups won't exist, except for inferior quality streams captured by pirates. How much priceless data will get lost forever in our future if video game companies do not change the way data is distributed to consumers? The current 95-year copyright term is much longer than the lifespan of current video game systems. Any an all archiving outside of game company internal docs within that time period is the realm of pirates. And it has been suggested that without MAME / Emulation, most of those little arcade and console recreations we enjoy today wouldn't be here. Nintendo themselves downloaded ROMs off of the Internet to stock their Virtual Console store, and so did everyone else...

I imagine it will be an all or nothing effect like when toggling the hi-rez dithering option on the Super NT while playing Kirby's Dreamland 3. The aesthetic looks like vertical scanlines for instance in the waterfall scenes in Sonic, but I can see where it gets grating on certain games. One difference is the Super Nintendo doubles the resolution when using dithering, from 256 pixel counts to 512. So blending can be performed and still lock the output to a perfect 256 pixel resolution. Megadrive, on the other hand, dithers at 320 horizontal pixel resolution, reducing the effective horizontal resolution to 160 pixels over composite. I believe the Genesis / JP Megadrive to be in sync with the NTSC pixel clock just like the Atari consoles, which can cause odd color anomalies when displayed as dithered instead of composite blended. Try playing Tower Toppler 7800 on real hardware over S-Video, or in an emulator for an example of how raw color data can be presented totally wrong in the absence of composite blending.

Only one additional year delay compared to the OP's January 2018 prediction (not bad in the grand scheme of things), but so glad these are shipping in 2019. I plan to purchase one whenever it is available through the AtariAge store. I am so glad you stuck to the course and never abandoned the race. This was a marathon, not a sprint after all. Take care...

Congrats. Having a proper baffle for 4-way games such as Pacman is essential. Got a few too many extra buttons on that thing however! These are really great sticks if you need something you can convert easily in less than one minute with a Phillips head screwdriver. https://paradisearcadeshop.com/en/home/controls/levers/levers-paradise-arcade/672_paradise-black-top-joystick Cost far less than a Sanwa (Sanwas also feel a bit loose need tuning out of the box imo, which adds to the cost) and while they have similar appearance to the Zippy sticks, they are much better IMO. The switches are heavy enough that it gives you tactile feedback as you slide into the corners, pretty much goes where you want it and don't get as many unintended diagonals in 8-way mode. It's the only Japanese style square gate stick I can really game comfortably on. Happ/IL are also good for 8-ways if you want bats and round baffles. Better use a heavier box though as they are stiffer and extend further under the control panel.

I can kinda vouch for this method: Sanding and finishing can be a bit labor intensive however.

Tetris is neat, but the game ends when you beat level 15, which feels like level 9 on the nes/gameboy. Kinda dumb it should at least keep going... Also T-spins break the game. Any time you have the opportunity to clear a line or two with a T-block (except edge cases) just soft drop it sideways and rotate into position. It yields big points, more than a Tetris would, and clears less lines in the process. The official game only counts T-spins if three of four corner bricks are occupied prior to rotating in place.

Is there a basic fun Galaga? I am a sucker for all variations of Galaga and Pacman / Ms Pacman. The Tiny Arcade Galaga from Super Impulse is pretty bad, though not quite as the cheap shots in Galaxian though. If there is Basic Fun galaga, I want to add it to my collection.

Composite interface is only necessary if you want to erect a sophisticated realtime targeting system to calculate the exact location of the gun in reference to the tv screen, then signal a hit whenever the portion of the composite signal that lines up with the coordinate is bright. Hyperkin is not that adept, and such a targeting system wouldn't be feasible at that price point. AVS should work in theory if it just detects delayed light output on the screen. Ugg, this is so dumb though. It's as if Hyperkin thinks "Duck Hunt" is the only Zapper game in existence worth playing. Ditto for the Kickstarter. Hyperkin bought them out it seems. So we do get a light gun that properly detects hdtv screens, but now all compatible games must be hacked and add bastardised Game Genies to interface the carts. Duck Hunt is covered. Great. What about these: Hogan's Alley Wild Gunman Gumshoe Bill Barker's Trick shooting Bandai Shooting Range Operation Wolf Gotcha Baby Boomer Chiller (2p) RetroUSB VS "Shoot the Dog" Duck Hunt Action 53 Vol 1 (2 player Zapper Pong) And prolly some others I forgot about. Anyway I will probably buy the Duck Hunt kit for lolz. And one for Hogan's Alley and Wild Gunman. Wild Gunman would be tricky to pull off due to latency issues. Later...