karokoenig

You're in right now. Just post some (any) score for Tunnel Runner, and with the 50+ points you get for that you will most likely stay there.

I wonder which is which :-).

One day in a few hundred or thousands of years, when no one on this planet can read .doc or .xls anymore, those scraps of paper might become incredibly valuable historical documents.

The Universe is a rather big place. Improbable things happen all the time.

Atari 2600 River Raid: 25 min A quick early entry in this week's High Score Club. Leaving for a vacation early tomorrow...

Game 1BB: 89,410. Not my personal best, but close. Also, my last chance to play on original hardware this week, since I'll leave for a vacation early tomorrow. So this will have to do.

Atari 2600 Lost Luggage: 6 min Raft Rider: 6 min Shark Attack: 4 min Not exactly record times. Just a bit of HSC participation.

Lost Luggage 4BB: 962.

There you go: Raftridr.bin

Raft Rider: 5,557. Shark Attack: 62. Shark Attack is too painful with keyboard controls.

Amiga 500 Ports of Call: 210 min So I stumbled across this Ports of Call Game DVD on a flea market recently. It's a modern remake I don't really care for. But something on the back cover caught my attention: the original Amiga version was included, so I thought "Why not?". Installation worked like a charm and I got sucked into the game for a few hours. I was surprised how well the "parking" worked for me. I remember we were extremely frustrated by that part back in the early Amiga days. I must say that all the harbour maneuvering and the iceberg evasion lost their novelty after those few hours and I uninstalled the game for now. But still, I consider it a worthwhile trip down memory lane. One Euro for 3 1/2 hours of entertainment. Very well spent, I would say :-).

Hell, if any game needs real hardware, it's this one. I would imagine with mouse control, it's really bad, but with touchpad alone, it's atrocious. The extra fast game variant doesn't help there either... It's tailor-made for paddle controllers.

Poor storage conditions (read moisture here) should have affected the cardboard outside box first and foremost, which, according to the OP is in good condition. Plastic detoriation is a completely different beast. Styrofoam (especially the old stuff) releases gases, parts of the case plastic could have submicroscopic gas bubbles or other impurities in it. This raise the reactive surface of that area by orders of magnitude. Something as simple as touching the plastic with your fingers adds all sorts of stuff: salts, water, some organic material, bacteria - you name it. Lots of potential catalysts for spontaneous corrosion. I have a Pong console which is in very good shape, spotless even. Except where the RF cable has touched the case during storage. The volatiles from the cable isolation have literally melted dents into the case over the years. My post was more a general statement about how different people define terms. If the seller has checked the items in the box for their condition, then the term "new" doesn't apply anymore anyway, right? If the seller even states that he has done just that - which is apparently the case - well, then no one can consider it "new" under such a strict definition. Also, "new" doesn't mean "flawless". There are always a ton of tiny flaws on anything that just rolled off the production line. You just have to look hard enough. We are talking about a piece of electronics that was built to be handled by kids in their room, kicked around, carts inserted with butterfingers and whatever your imagination can come up with. We have no idea how strict the quality control criteria were back then. For all we know, a significant portion of produced units could have left the factory already with small scratches here and there. Today, a small community of people treats these items as if they were the Mona Lisa. I can't help but notice a slight disconnect there. Again - I'm not blaming the OP. A scratch is a scratch, and they are there, no doubt. The question is one of proportionality: how closely does a seller have to look at his wares in order to confidently claim they're good as new. In this case (great box, great styrofoam, stapled bags, etc.), I wouldn't blame him for overlooking what the OP described. That doesn't save him from a possible (partial) refund, of course, because technically, the item is not as described. But I wouldn't blame the seller for saying to himself "A refund for THAT? Wow...".

I dunno. Tiny scratches like that and a somewhat rough surface in some places might already have happened in the production line or packing plant. The surface texture in your photo 3 and 4 might also be a result of impurities in the plastic, or even a reaction of the plastic to sweaty fingerprints at any time between production of the unit and today. We're talking 30 years here. Material detoriation in the box isn't anything new in the retro scene. Extreme example: Acti-Plague on factory-sealed Activision carts. I understand you paid a load of cash for this, but really in my opinion asking totally mint for anything that old is asking a bit much. Maybe your expectations were a tad high in the first place? There often is a discrepancy in perception between different people, and we collectors have a tendency to be an order of magnitude higher on the "picky" side than any sane person. Yes, there are idiot sellers and scammers out there. But there are also quite a few decent sellers who are just not prepared to deal with the expectations of some super anal high end collector. You mentioned yourself that the damage is rather subtle, and you had to look somewhat hard to notice it. Maybe the seller just didn't look hard enough before describing the item. Not saying you are one of those. And even if I did, I should probably add: "We all are, to some degree". Just pointing out that in a highly specialized scene like ours, the language is different from the outside world. So are definitions of condition. And when you look at it from the outside, both sides may just be right.

After a bit of memorization, I can do the whole course full throttle, except for the one supersharp left turn. I tried to make it through by easing off the gas, but I feel like I'm losing more time doing that than by just crashing and moving on.

Touchpad controls?

Upgrading to the newer Stella version did the trick for me. Thanks Lid! Score: 7,620.

The ROM doesn't work for me. Just gives me a black screen with a very high pitched ringing beep. Using Stella. Is there a PAL ROM as well? Don't think it's a region problem, but you never know.

Night Driver 2BA: 88 No matter how much I try - that one left turn always gets me.

Atari 2600 Eggomania: 12 min Quick entry in the HSC. Had to emulate it, which of course sucks without paddles... (edit): Add the following times: Atari 2600 Circus Atari: 15 min Night Driver: 11 min Street Racer: 3 min Super Breakout: 20 min Super Cobra Arcade: 8 min Except for Super Cobra Arcade, these were all played on original hardware. Night Driver is the game of the week in the HSC, and since I had the paddles hooked up anyway, I thought I might as well give some other paddle games a spin. Had a really good round in Circus Atari - for my standards. Got into the flow, which is a great feeling, and almost exclusively achieved with paddle games. So yeah... what Opry99er said...

Bonus: Enduro.

4,836 with touchpad controls. Horrible! I thought I have the cart, but can't find it yet.

I'm game. Gonna have to emulate most of it, since I have very few homebrews myself.

Atari 2600: Seawolf: 65 min Squish 'em: 7 min Homebrew weeks in the HSC. Next two weeks: Paddles!

4,270. That's a Colecovision port, right? Not bad.