curtishart

I actually pulled the tracks from my Stella CD and have them on my iPhone now. It won't do MP3 rips, but uncompressed wav files seem to do the trick for me.

Yea, I can do something like these - as mentioned I already have them in my entertainment center. I was just wondering if anyone built something custom for their consoles to accommodate them. As mentioned, I was thinking about modifying the design of the old Atari Kiosks to house the carts on either side of the TV, and the consoles in a slide-out below. Give it a sort of retro/70's vibe to it.

Okay, maybe not a bunch of consoles, but I do have a 2600, 7800 & Colecovision. Now, I'd like to set these up in the 2nd living room's TV but I'd like to build a custom cabinet to hold them, their controllers and cartidges in some sort of fashion. I want to build something that closely resembles the old kiosks we all used to see at Sears or other department stores in the 70s and 80s, but those were built with the idea of customers standing for a few minutes to play some of the games, and a bit too tall if you plan to sit in front of a couch to play them. Currently I have them in a cheapo entertainment center with an ABC switch so I can switch between each console I'd like to play. So, down to my question - what are you guys doing to display/setup your multiple consoles? Looking for design ideas for this so I can properly show-off my systems

Two things about that: 1) No one can upload custom artwork (Can you imagine 1000's of people doing so then you'd have to dl those extra artworks before you can play each time? 2) Copywrited characters are off limits. If you create one, sooner or later the admins will send you a "This character is too close to XXX superhero, please delete your character or be banned" email. That being said, there is a large db for creating custom looks and I don't think I've seen two characters similar yet.

If you pre-order the game at Best Buy ($10) you get a Beta license. (Plus you get $10 off the full version when it's released) but the beta is supposed to end at the end of this month, so I don't know if it's worth it or not this late in the game (no pun intended ) However, for $10 it's a great way to preview a game before shelling out $50 for the game plus whatever it'll cost for the subscription fees. Howver, I'm sold.

Ssshhhh!!!!! You're not supposed to tell anyone! I've been playing both City of Heroes and Lineage 2. While I like both of them, City of Heroes has me totally hooked. curtishart, what characters do you have and on what servers? I have about 4 characters on Prime and 1 on Pinnacle, which is the one I've been playing on the most lately. If you're on, look for Mace Walker (level 12 Tanker) on Prime or The Jesus Lizard (level 8 Defender) on Pinnacle. Yea, mostly creating characters and leveling to about 5 just to see all the functionality so far. I have a Natural Scrapper called Capt. Japan, a Science Controller called Dr. Mind Job (I swaer I'm the only character in tights ) on Prime and on Pinnacle I have a Mutant Tanker called Urth. Loving the game so far.

I just got my beta license last night at Best Buy ($10 pre-order) Having fun so far and was wondering is anyone else it on it. -C

Wow I thought *I* was the only one who felt this way. I love playing my Atari w/my son and he can't get the simple controls and gameplay.

I would probably have to say Blackjack, only because it was the only game I could get my family to play me on a regular basis (I kept killing them in the other games ) But my personal fav, would probably be Video Olympics

I think the biggest reason was Atari didn't see the O2 a threat until they developed KC Munchkin. When that game came out (And forgive me - I'm trying to remember 20+ years ago) it was the game to put O2 back on the radar, which Atari didn't like. My 2 credits

Yes it was. I have no reference to how much memory cost back then, but I do know back around '92-93 when I upgraded my machine w/2MB of RAM it costs me about $200.00 so 10-15 year before then I'm sure it was expensive for 4k, etc as well.

I did a website a while back (My account on ev1 has since been closed, but they're still hosting my site...go figure) on arcade games: http://users2.ev1.net/~curtishart/badger/index.html Has a history of "first" technologies plus some arcade-related articles. I'm sure going through these can give you some tid-bits of reference on the impact of consoles vs. arcade games in the 80's It's been too long since I've added anything to this however hopefully in the future more time will permit me to add more articles (I still have about 100+ arcade articles to post to that portion of my site.) Best of luck, and let us know when your paper is completed. I'd love to read it.

Anyone ever see this? http://www.newvenue.com/archives/feature44/ Pretty cool, using only Atari 2600 sounds...

Okay, fair enough since Combat is Tank; Outlaw is Gunfight/Boot Hill, etc. I guess I'm thinking more along the lines of obvious arcade ports such as Kangaroo, Moon Patrol, etc where they buy the rights to port the game. Just some of the ports seems too focused on trying to get the game as close to the arcade counterpart so much it looses some of the playability rather than taking the arcade's concept (gameplay) and make a fun game. Granted the two titles that got me thinking about this is Gravitar and Kangaroo (Don't care for either on the 2600)

Tough one if I could only choose one game. However if I could grab a few... 1986-ish - Local mall's Freedom Fighter 1983 - Chuck E. Cheese - Dragon's Lair, Bagman Taco Bueno (Yes, they had an uber-cool arcade in there back then) Dedicated Major Havoc, Reactor 7-11 - Venture (The only cab I've ever seen) Crystal's Pizza Palace - Environmental Discs of Tron Ironically, only one Atari title. Hmmm

Okay, overall which do you think Atari did a better job at? Both sides have their plus and negatives imo, but overall I would have to go with the opriginal games. Most of the arcade ports just didn't translate well I think. There are some exceptions...but they're mostly earlier arcade games such as Circus Atari, Warlods and Breakout. I just think many of the later ports they should have taken the basic gameplay and make it their own. Thoughts?

I think it depends on how common a Sear store was in your area. Around here (Suburb of Dallas and Ft Worth) Sears was probably a dominant store back in the 70's so almost everyone had a Tele-Games in their home growing up (Including your's truly) but as for desireability of one over the other - the only value I can see of a Sears Tele-Games system over an Atari are those wanting it for nostalgia of growing up for one. I would think an actual Atari system would be more desireable due to the name recognition value. ...my two bits.

I think my first Activision game was Laser Blast. I was mesmorized by that 'rainbow' colored laser and loved that game.

Honestly, I think it's personal taste. Some collect in an attempt to collect them all. Some collect based on if they see it, they get it regardless of how many copies of it they already have, while some collect for another reason. Personally if you're looking for "What titles do I start looking for first" my rule of thumb is to grab the ones I played growing up first. It's a great nostalgic rush personally.

http://users2.ev1.net/~curtishart/badger/index.html Don't know why my old ISP still has it up there (been too lazy to repost my site on my new ISP service) However, the email links on that site are defunct so don't bother emailing me from the old site

The cool thing about Space Lords is that you can have up to 4 people on one cabinet (Kinda like Cyberball) but on either side, one player is the pilot of that screen, the second one is a tailgunner of that ship. And I believe you could link up to 8 cabinets! That's 32 players simultaniously. THAT would've been cool to see/play. -Curtis

Midway/WizardWorks ported this game to the PC (I have a copy of the CD I got off eBay for $5) it's pretty good, but I don't know if it has the secret Battlezone level or not. In fact, it's been a while since I've even fired thisup on the PC. Ought to try to dig it out and see. -Curtis