Andromeda Stardust

I votes either pet rock or the light bulb app. Toss up between them.

You don't build a clapper controller. You install the "clapper" as a microphone built right into the cartridge. I would pay money for that!

Yeah I figured out the formula for the maximum starting score. Take the score earned in the previous game session, and round down to the nearest integer multiple of 15,000. Subtract 15,000 from the result. That is your new starting point score. So every game play session you need to score a minimum of 15k points without a game over in order to resume a new game from the same starting score as your previous attempt. The lowest possible maximum score is 30,000, meaning you can start at 30,000 points even if your previous score attempt was zero. I have no idea what the upper bounds on the starting starting score is. You also earn an extra life every 15k points as well. After I scored 129,000 points, I pasued for a breather. I was able to restart a game on 105,000. Then I totally started sucking badly and failed to earn 15k and restarted my next successive rounds on 90,000 and 75,000. I think at some point I just shut off the system and called it a night. Being "in the zone" is apparently a real thing with arcade style games. I can have a great game for one session then suck terribly at it on subsequent attempts. This is especially true with pinball games, real or simulation. I might have for instance five plays that fail to break 100,000, then score several millions like it's some sort of fluke. I think what separates pro players from the amateurs is the ability to immediately find their "zone" and never lose it. Sometimes I'll completely lose focus of my surroundings for a bit only to look up at the score and say "holy crap, that's huge" then immediately lose my remaining balls / lives. I guess it's a psyche thing.

Nice! Another right-hand joy guy. I am right handed but prefer a lefty stick. Neat the choice to work in sheet metal. So industrial, though I think wood is much easier to work with in a home shop environment. I'd be afraid of sharp burrs or edges when working with steel. I once mis-calculated a joystick mounting plate screw hole drill in one of my Atari joysticks by a couple millimeters or so, so rather than widen the hole in the wood, I attempted to widen the hole in the steel mounting plate --- using wood drill bits! Working out on the patio, the bit jammed and I increased the torque until my drill threw the plate clear across the yard, cutting my hand in the process. Also chipped an otherwise perfectly good 5/16" drill bit. I am lucky it didn't sling it the opposite direction into the safety glass on the French patio doors! That would not have ended pretty. Finally had to grind the hole out with one of those cone-shaped dremel grinders. My hand was fine though. Kept right on working with zero first aid treatment. Healed nice. Like the knight in Monty Python, "it's merely a flesh wound..." I gotta post WIP pics of the "rats nest" in my 16-bit ultimate stick. Been procrastinating on it. School is more important though but I'm pretty much done for the semester at this point.

Complete understatement there but you are so right... It's as if the cutscenes were developed first, then they try to shoehorn in some slash and bash gameplay mechanics to accompany their graphic novel / manga...

Whoo-hoo, just scored 88082 pts in Millipede TB. New personal record!!! EDIT: What's the dealio? Am I regressing? I start on 30000, score 88000 points and it lets me restart at 60000. I make it to 73000 and it makes me start at 45000. Then I screw up and game over at 50-something and it won't let me start past 30000. I want another whack at 60000... EDIT2: Just made 88099, besting my personal "best" by 17 points! EDIT3: Holy Freakking Cow! Six digits! 129,706 points! (starting score of 60000)

Not really hearing the "VCS" sound effects, or NES graphics. Just a lot of CD audio. But seriously good grief. 6 minutes in we finally see some gameplay. I was beginning to think I was watching a graphic novel / Manga unfold instead of an actual game...

Up is more intuitive.

So you are saying that the JS mode is rotated sideways with horizontal and vertical axes switched? When I set the trackball to JS mode, and rotate the ball slowly up and down, it tends to oscillate between the top and second to the top menu selections. Maybe the JS/TB switch is busted?

Cool some of them are blue and some are yellow. I can imagine a DJ making a wall out of these. Although judging by the crackle the Neons make, I'd guess they probably emit a good bit of EMI which may interfere with the sound equipment unless every component is very well grounded and shielded.

Yeah she gets pissed at me if she sends me to the store to buy groceries and I buy real franks because "they're too expensive..." Plus there's 610mg per dog, enough sodium in those things to kill a horse. And my mom's also on a low sodium diet. She taught me to read labels when I was a teen but probably never reads the labels herself, ie buys "light" dressing when it's loaded with corn syrup, etc. The fact that she'll pick up a can of Chilli with "no beans" and then without looking pull five more off the shelf that have beans is proof (I've always hated beans). Back to the dogs, I'm not at a point in my life yet where I have to worry about sodium intake but if I can taste the freakking salt in the dogs, it's too much. Sorry for the off topic rant...

101% Yep. Shady indeed. This is another reason why most of the KS projects I've backed have been for small sums. Suppose I back a digital indie game, say Shantae or Yooka-Laylee for instance. I typically choose the "digital download on console of my choice" + soundtrack (if offered) option. So if it fails to come to fruition, it's a disappointment yes, but I'm only out $20-$25 so it's not the end of the world to me. Some of the more ambitious projects that are asking multiple hundreds of dollars for products like it's some kind of "preorder", I'm a lot more hesitant to back. That's a serious investment and I would be out a lot of moolah if it failed.

There is a switch on the CX-22 and CX-80 trackballs to make it emulate a Joystick. Despite this, for some reason, I find it nearly impossible to navigate the Harmony menu in this mode, however to just to select one of three menu items with the trackball in JS mode, hit FIRE, and switch back to TB mode to play the game would be doable. I think only the Amiga mouse would require actual hot swapping to plug in a joystick. The issue with "only the fire button can be used" is also easily remedied by using the console SELECT switch to highlight menu items and RESET to start game. Maybe joystick inputs could even be ignored by the selection menu to prevent malfunction when using trackballs. As much as I would love to buy the Centipede and Millipede hacks in the AA store, Albert would be wise to look into doing a 3-in-1 menu for use with these hacks so that people who order the wrong cart don't need to return it for various reasons, such as a CX-80 behaving as CX-22 like mine. Also would be great for collectors with more than one trackball or mouse device.

Well the analog control I imagine is still far better than using a 2600 trackball in JS mode. I imagine Tempest plays nice with it at any rate. I found navigating the Harmony menu with my CX-80 trackball in JS mode extremely difficult, so much I had to hot swap my arcade joystick with it. Easy enough to do with a Genesis extension cable but still. The homebrew ROMs controlled like butter though. I may see about getting a cheap USB encoder for the Trackball to use with my Raspberry Pi MAME barcade. I imagine I could simply put the trackball encoder into a project enclosure and trace the pins to a 9-pin male Dsub connector. It would probably make a neat PC mouse too except it's only got one button. Whatever. They sell a laser trackball USB mouse at Office Depot I could probably get one to use in a pinch.

And that seriously defeats much of the precision afforded by true trackball control. IE barely nudge the trackball and your pixel would barely nudge onscreen. I was exited about someday getting a 5200 console and trackball. Still am but I don't have room for this behemoth console atm. It's just with the trackball and a handmade digital joystick, most of the control issues would be eliminated. I guess it explains why nearly all 5200 games supported the trackball through some capacity.

Word. And these are the only hot dogs my mom ever buys...

I remember that episode well, but it was a long, long time ago before I ever got serious into collecting Nintendo games, much less Atari. Part of the segment appears to be clipped. The Atari itself was valued at $100 so it's very likely the whole lot was over-appraised. I'm not sure what a six switch Atari sold for in the early 00s but true holy grail stuff like Air Raid and Red Sea Crossing wasn't even discovered yet.

Self altering code is definitely possible. It's called RAM. Doubly confusing that we have CX-22s that don't function as trackballs at all and CX-80s (like mine) that function like CX-22s. I know this would add complexity but it may not hurt to do do the three 8k ROMs on a 32k cartridge with a simple selection menu. For homebrews like Colony 7 that originally supported joystick, a forth option for joystick mode might be added. Obviously this joystick mode would not be an option for commercial hacks. Simply select an encoding format on the boot menu screen and a version of the game appropriate for your trackball is loaded. Maybe a fully fleshed out homebrew menu could offer a "test" mode to determine your control scheme for unknown trackball. A simple crosshairs cursor on screen and press fire on the controller to swap the cursor between joystick, CX-22, CX-80, and Amiga. Maybe this test screen plus the boot menu could be worked into an 8k ROM or less. Trackballs would need to be temporarily set to JS mode to navigate the menu, or a joystick plugged into the second controller port could be used to avoid the need to unplug the controller if the P1 trackball is hard wired. If the player should pick the wrong version of the ROM, just toggle the power switch or press select and reset together to reset back to the menu. 32k boards won't add much cost over 8k ROMs and it prevents costly returns to the AA store for people who mistakenly ordered the wrong cart version.

Bull. Nintendo only licensed their arcade IP Mario bros and Donkey Kong and DK Jr and Popeye to Atari and other consoles because they were not in the console market at the time, least in the US. Sans some obscure educational PC titles like Mario teaches typing or the crappy and forgettable Phillips CDi titles, and potential future "mobile apps," name one instance where Nintendo licensed their IP on another gaming platform? Yes, I did just list several exceptions, but my point is Nintendo as a general rule doesn't license their IP to third party game platforms...

It gets worse. Developers demand encryption so that their games do not get pirated. But encryption kills homebrew development. I think RetroVGS would become a lot more attractive to the retrogaming community if it was opened up to homebrew apps. But developers won't port to the console unless it's locked down. Another classic catch-22 situation if I ever saw one. In addition to the "if you build it, they will come" looming issue where developers won't port games without an install base and you can't build an install base without games. That is a very real hurdle to cross...

Interesting to note. Is there some calibration pots so that the pointer doesn't creep if you don't touch the trackball? You know since the joysticks aren't self centering and every game used a different method of detecting center?

If true, you've probably 1-upped nearly everyone on the forum. Congrats and pics or it didn't happen!

You can play that one game that doesn't work on system 2.0 or Dous with a system 1.0 card, I think. Yeah that one. Support for CD games on Everdrive is moot anyway as far as I'm concerned, especially with the current market price for the CD module. And Duos aren't much cheaper... One reason to keep around the old v1.x Everdrive will be Retro Freak support. When you remove or eject the SD card from the Everdrive, the v1.x TED automatically loads the game ROM stored in flash. Since the Retro Freak is essentially a dumper+emulator like Retron, this will enable you to use the Everdrive 1.x with it. But you still need a real Turbografx or PC Engine to flash new games on it. Or just load them on the Retro Freak SD card and skip the TED...

So you're into clockmaking now. Cool!