Serious

I've used Commodore paddles to play Demons to Diamonds, and they worked wonderfully for that game. Super accurate and responsive.

Best of luck with your new site.. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Hi everyone, There's a few new contests that have just started on High Score that I thought I'd mention on this thread.. Prizes are available in three categories: The top 3 voters during the contest period will win their choice of $25 AtariAge gift certificates or eBay gift cards. The player who wins (and retains) the most Worldwide trophies on NES (emulated or real hardware) during the contest period will win an Everdrive N8 cartridge (like the Harmony cart, but for the NES). The player who wins (and retains) the most Worldwide trophies on Commodore 64 (emulated or real hardware) during the contest period will win an SD2IEC drive (like the Harmony cart, but for the C64). The contest will end on August 3rd (midnight Eastern time). Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

I'm definitely getting back into DOS games in a big way.. I love the games, but the hardware issues that I'm running into (like a soundcard driver failure) are reminding me of some of the less enjoyable aspects of DOS machines as a gaming platform.. I don't know about it not being as collectible, etc.. Classic PC hardware can get kinda pricey, if you're looking for some of the less common configurations/components that many DOS games utilize. For example, Tandy 1000 hardware, and some soundcards (like Gravis Ultrasound cards) aren't exactly cheap. When I started looking for some components, I was really shocked at the asking price on some of this stuff.. 5.25 floppy drives, for example..

Cool! Thanks for telling me. I actually bought that collection, recently, but I hadn't tried it out, yet. I knew about Space Dungeon, but not those other Sega arcade games. I've been hoping that VitaTV would be announced in the U.S. so I can play Space Dungeon on a full-size monitor. (If VitaTV doesn't happen here, I'll probably get a PSP Slim.) Hopefully, there will be a device that will allow connecting a fight stick to a Bluetooth adapter for the VitaTV. If so, then we might be in business.

The PS2 is such a great machine for arcade gaming, with all of the arcade collections for it, and the wide availability of arcade sticks for it. I've counted 255 arcade titles that are playable on the PS2 (a few of which are only available on PS1 collections). If it weren't for a few titles I like that aren't available on the PS2 (Gorf, Space Dungeon, Zektor, Mad Planets, and Reactor being the ones that come to mind), I'd probably not play MAME at all.

I think you're going to be happy with it. For $20AUD, that was a steal. Mine didn't come with the bag.. That may be unique to Aussie ones.. So far, I've found a way through a combination of adapters to use it with any system I've tried, except for old DOS games running natively (though I could probably make it work via USB adapters with DOSBox). That being said, I'm tending to use it mostly now for Atari-joystick-compatible systems, instead of trying to use it as my primary controller on all systems. There are two reasons for this: 1. During intense gameplay, it doesn't tend to stay still when I set it on a desk. (It works best in your lap.) I have PS2 sticks that do stay put, so for the systems I keep on my desk, I'm tending to use my best PS2 arcade stick more often. 2. You can't have it connected to multiple systems at once. When I first discovered this, I considered using a serial port switch to overcome this limitation, but all of those cables tend to get in my way. Some games I play with the BS2, I do better with it than I do with a handheld joystick. And sometimes, the opposite is true. It is a weapon I'm very glad to have as a part of my arsenal, and is my go-to controller for many games, but I'm finding I still have plenty of use for other parts of my arsenal as well.

The patches were the same regardless of region. But the 2600 patches were usually different than the patches for games on other systems. Intellivision had some unique designs, but most other systems shared a common patch design (though they weren't always earned the same way). There are a couple of rare variations on the 2600 patches: There is an early Starmaster patch that Todd Rogers has, which looks completely embroidered (if my memory is correct). I'm not sure if there is more than 1 known to exist. The half-moon Beamrider patch that Zwackery mentioned is the 2600 variation of the patch. However, for some reason, Activision mostly mailed out the version that was meant for the Intellivision. It could be that they didn't produce enough of the 2600 version, or they over-produced the Intellivision version. This 2600 half-moon Beamrider is probably the rarest 2600 Activision patch that it is actually feasible to acquire (for a price). If you are interested in what is required to qualify for all of the patches on all systems, this is a pretty good list. It is missing the C64 and Atari 400/800 patches (which are visually identical to the 5200 patches, with the exception of Toy Bizarre). I'm also unsure if there were patch qualifications for other systems that had Pitfall, River Raid, etc.. IBM PCjr is one such system that these games were available for.. This is something I plan to research.. Activision also sent letters with these patches, and issued certificates. Lots of great info in this old thread that Zwackery started in 2007..

A couple of updates on recent experiments: The PSX -> TG16 adapter arrived this week and I tried it out on the BS2 today (by using an SNES -> PSX adapter cable). For whatever reason, it did not work. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the PSX -> TG16 adapter, as I was able to use a PSX arcade stick with this adapter, and I had no issues. I also tried connecting the BS2's Control Pin-Out port to my PC's parallel port via a DB25 cable, I ran SNESKEY, and no matter how I initialized it, nothing seemed to work. I also tried a DB9 -> DB25 cable on both the Atari and Genesis outputs, and also no luck. It may be that power is needed, but I'm thinking that the normal wiring on a serial cable just isn't what SNESKEY is meant to handle. I'm not sure what I'm going to try next. I can live without using the BS2 on a TG16 (though that sure would be nice), but I'd really like to be able to have a re-mappable arcade stick for DOS gaming.

It actually fits comfortably in my lap. I've been using it on a desk lately, and I'm finding that in intense gameplay, I'm moving it around, so I may need to do something to make it more stationary.. P.S. There is a defective one on eBay right now.

A photo (found on SegaAge forums) from the BS2 manual describing the "Control Pin-Out" port: So it sounds like this was added to support Jamma boards..? It looks like a standard DB25 connection, so I think I'll buy a $6 DB25 cable, connect it directly to the LPT1 port, run SNESKey for DOS, and see what happens.. If the above doesn't work, that's what I'd like to do.

I'm not familiar with the Gravis Gamepad, but I like the idea of keymapping, because it opens up the possibility of using all of the buttons on the BS2 (or any other controller) in a configurable way for all PC games. I have a MAME cabinet that uses a card to map arcade buttons to re-mappable keyboard input. (I think it is called a KE72.) It might be easier to do something with that since it outputs to the keyboard port instead of the parallel port. The fact that the BS2 has DB9 connections on it means that I could probably split apart a cheap serial port cable. You now.. Now that I think about it, there is that big "expansion" port (or whatever they call it) on the BS2 as well. I wonder what could be done with that? I'm not at home right now, so I can't look at it, but that might basically be a parallel port.

I haven't, but I am guessing this is the same thing, but Windows-based software. I am clumsy when trying to do hardware mods, so I'd rather find somewhere that I could buy one of these parallel port adapters, but no luck so far. I recently acquired Silpheed (DOS) and a Roland MT-32, and I'd love to connect my Battlestation 2 to my retro PC for use with this great game.

I'm still waiting for the TG16 adapter to arrive, so no updates there.. But after inquiring on the VOGONS forum, I think I've found a way to connect the BS2 to a PC for DOS gaming. It is possible to connect classic game controllers to the parallel port of a PC via an adapter, and to map the control output to keyboard input using a TSR program called SNESkey. You apparently can write an ini file for the key mapping, so I'm thinking I could write an ini file for each game (based on which keys it uses) and initialize SNESkey with the settings for a specific game before loading the game. I am thinking that this should also allow using the BS2 on MAME.

http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=23 Controller adapters for PSX -> PC Engine, TG16, Neo Geo, and Saturn consoles.. Using the SNES -> PSX adapter plus one of these might enable using the BS2 with these other consoles. I think I am going to order the TG16 adapter and will give it a try.

Just curious.. How did you find this??

That must be it! Thanks!!

I'm looking to start playing some of my old DOS games from the early 90s.. But I have a problem. Most of my disks were formatted in a special format using a program called 800.COM that allowed formatting 3.5 floppies to hold 800k (instead of the 720k). Attempting to use a search engine to find "800.com" yields only unrelated results. I'm wondering if any of you are familiar with this program and know where I might find it, or if anyone has any suggestions on some sites/resources where I might find this? Thanks..

Cool to see you on here.. I love your Youtube channel.

It also comes with overlays! I wonder if they'll fit a real Intellivision controller? Here's the box:

RetroCollect blocked the image.. I'll try adding this one from Toys R Us: Looks cool to me..

I'll be interested to hear how that turns out. I'd be even more interested in a way to connect it to a real TG16 console.. I'd also like to find a way to connect this to a PC game port for some old DOS games.. But I think those controllers are analog, so that might be tricky.. I'm not sure the Stelladapter would help, here, since that's a USB adapter.. Ok, so I received the same adapters this week, and they look the same as yours. My guess is that these are SNES extension cables spliced into PSX extension cables.. I got some weird results with connecting my BS2 to my PS2... First issue which puzzled me greatly for about 20 minutes was that the PS2 didn't respond to any control movement or buttons at all. I tried toggling the "Atari/Commodore only" switch both ways, swapped out cables and adapters, etc.. What I eventually figured out is that you have to disconnect the cables from the Atari/Commodore ports. Apparently, the signal never gets to the NES/SNES ports if the Atari cables are connected. This is very disappointing! Given that you have to screw the cable connectors to the base unit, swapping out these cables when I want to change systems is going to be a pain. I'm going to experiment to see if there is something I can do to find a way to get around this problem (like using a serial port switch or something). If I find something that works, I'll post it here. (On a related note, I'm thinking that a serial port switch might also make it easy to re-route the BS2's connections to various consoles without plugging/unplugging.. I'm thinking of trying this to switch control between my 7800, my C64, and my Amiga 500... Second issue which I still haven't figured out: The video display on my PS2 goes dark when I plug in the controller to the PS2 while the PS2 is powered on, and same thing if I connect/disconnect/wiggle the cable connections to the BS2 controller. I guess that there is some kind of electric current looping back into the PS2 from the controller that it doesn't know how to deal with. So far, it hasn't interfered with any gameplay, but I'm not sure it is good for the PS2.. Luckily, PS2 consoles are cheap and abundant.. But perhaps something like your Colecovision fix may be beneficial here.. And I'm also curious if that might not also be the same problem affecting the Odyssey 2?

I don't know about splicing them, but it is possible to make an adapter. I bought a couple from someone years back. Wish I could refer you to them, but it was a long time ago..

Ok, I'm asking for honest opinions: Is there something wrong with me for wanting to own one of these landfill treasures?

There is going to be another contest in the near future.. More details to come soon..