WaverBoy

That's nothing to laugh about. I will never buy a multicart unless and until I own legitimate, original copies of every title in the collection and have reasonable assurance that the multicart maker also owns original copies of each of the reissued titles. Even though I'd love the convenience of having so many games only a dipswitch away, I cannot accept the idea of contributing to copyright infringement and software piracy. Ben Please. Do you think the copyright owners are making any money off of used Atari cartridges? Especially ones that go for hundreds of dollars like Quadrun or Bounty Bob? Nope. Can you walk into Wal-Mart and buy new ones? Nope. Since these are no longer available regularly in stores, even if you manage to find a new cartridge, the copyright owners won't make any money off of it. The only people making any money off old Atari cartridges (and, for that matter, any Atari hardware) are eBay sellers. Whether you buy these, or multicarts, makes no real difference to the copyright owners. Your argument, in this case, doesn't hold up. If Infogrames wants to make money off these old games, then they can put them all out legitimately on one PC-compatible CD-Rom, or TV-compatible device, with decent Atari-type controllers to go along with, and plenty of Atari fans will buy them for the sake of convenience as long as the games and control are perfectly reproduced (the Jakks joystick 10-in-1 atrocity obviously doesn't count here). The people who want them in cartridge format, to play on an actual Atari for nostalgia's sake, will still be buying the old cartridges, which, whether "unlicensed" multicart or original, still won't make any money for Infogrames. If anything, keeping these games alive right now via emulators and "illegal" roms, and both old cartridges and multicarts, can only help Infogrames, if they ever decide to re-release the games, as it keeps the interest alive. If it wasn't for such fan interest, these games would be dead. Unfortunately, Infogrames obviously has NO CLUE in how to properly market these old games to their fans, if the Jakks joystick is any evidence.

Thanks guys for the info. Paul, I've got a 4-switch woodgrain 2600, the same model I had as a child (sigh). But, could it be that 4Jays is right? Perhaps mine is out of adjustment? If so, what settings are there on it to adjust, and is it something a layman like myself could do?

Yeah, I got one of the adapters at Radio Shack so I could get rid of the switchbox. So, the switchbox isn't the problem. Paul Slocum's assertion that homebrew carts have no RF shielding is troubling me...why don't they have it? If original Atari carts had it, and the homebrew carts are built inside the original shells, why don't they have RF shielding as well? If they can't use the original RF shielding, couldn't new shielding be fashioned? Re: problem being because of the design of the multicart, I thought that might be the problem, but as I said, the carts were made by different people, and one holds 256 games, the other holds 128. Then Paul mentioned the RF shielding factor, and now I really don't know what to think. Surely, if my system is out of adjustment, it would show these same problems on my regular Atari carts...unfortunately, I don't have access to another Atari 2600 on which to test the multicarts. Perhaps I'm the only crazy in town who has one.

So, as I mentioned in a previous post, I recently bought 2 multicarts for the Atari 2600, from different vendors. Both suffered from picture distortion in exactly the same way: weird lines of texturing. Regular Atari cartridges play fine on my system. Paul Slocum replied to my post and said that it's because the carts don't have RF shielding, and that no homebrew carts have it. My question for that response is, why not? One of the carts I got from 4-Jays, and I sent it back to have them test it out, and possibly replace it. Here's the response I got back from them: "Hi, The cart tests good. The problem is that your system is not adjusted to the original specs so that occurs. Have sold over 100 and only had 5 with this trouble. 4 units were replaced or adjusted and worked okay. Will send you a refund with shipping as a good gesture." Now, what's up with that? Could my Atari 2600 really be out of adjustment? If it is, why would it play normal Atari cartridges just peachy? And again, if it is, how would I go about adjusting it properly?

I'm running Win2k, and have no problems running MAME (with a frontend program), ZSNES, JNES, VirtuaNES, PC Atari, eSMS, Virtual Colecovision, Nostalgia (Intellivision), GENS (Genesis), etc. etc. etc. If you're having problems running emulators on Win2k, you're running the wrong ones. All the emulators I listed have GUIs, and don't require knowledge of DOS commands, THANK F**KING GOD. Here's a great place to get them and frontends for them as well: http://www.zophar.net/index.phtml Look under Emulators For Windows/DOS. Although, I must say that the classic console emulators are no, I repeat, NO substitute for the actual consoles themselves. The controls just aren't as good. Plus, sometimes the responses of onscreen objects to the controls are off by a fraction of a second, just enough to throw your game off. I've had no such problems with MAME, though, which, short of spending a few hundred grand for your own working full-size arcade, is the ONLY way to go for classic arcade games, especially when on a computer that's built into an arcade-style cabinet. If I had a spare 5 grand and a basement, you can be sure I'd have one yesterday.

I'm getting back into the Genesis myself. Bought one for $20 a couple months ago, and I'm reliving some of the great games for that system. I must say that Dragon's Fury (formerly Devil's Crush) is one of the best and most addictive video games EVER EVER EVER. One question about Dragon's Fury: what's the difference, if any, between it and the earlier Devil's Crush version for the Turbografx 16? Is either one better than the other? Is it true that they changed the name so stupid people wouldn't think it's satanic?

Wow...it sounds pretty cool!!! Check out this writeup on it: http://www.gbax.com/gp32review.html So, what I want to know is, do you need special emulators for this, or can you use PC Atari, JNES, VirtuaNES, GENS (Sega Genesis), eSMS (Sega Master), and, last but not least, MAME?

I figured it was something along those lines. Why can't RF shielding be put in homebrew carts? What sort of shielding do the original Atari carts use?

I've gotten two different Atari 2600 multicarts, one with 256 games on it from 4-Jays, and one with 128 games on it that I had custom-made. Both of them are made by different people, but they both have one annoying characteristic: the picture is riddled with weird texturing lines, showing up worse in some games than others, but all games on the cartridges have it. The problem looks identical in both multicarts. And, it's not my system or set-up, because it plays my original Atari cartridges just fine. For instance, the picture on my original cartridge of Donkey Kong looks great (well, as great as the old Atari RF can look). If I select it on either of the multicarts, it looks crappy. Anyone know what's causing this? Is it just the nature of the 2600 multicart beast, because so many games are crammed in there? I know nothing of such technical matters, but I do know that something's amiss. Help!

Actually, for new games, $50 most likely is warranted, not because of production cost, but because of the need to merely break even on the millions and millions of dollars spent on R&D for each game. For example, the amount spent by Infogrames on Enter The Matrix is reported to be in the 100 million range, so to just break even, if retailers were paying them $50 a game, it would take 2 million units. But, since it can be ordered on the net for a little over $30, I doubt the wholesale cost is $50. Let's say the wholesale cost is $30. Now it would take over 3.3 million units. As far as old games, they're worth whatever anyone will pay for them, and unfortunately Gamestop is wise to this.

Space Panic it is! Man, I've never heard of that one. I'll have to check it out. Perhaps we can dub Donkey Kong the first POPULAR platform game...

I can't think of an earlier game based around a cartoony character that jumps and climbs from level to level, avoiding things, killing things, and picking up objects. Of course, I'm far from an expert on arcade history...so I could very well be embarrassingly wrong.

Oops, in my above post I meant to say "Gunstarhero's opinion" instead of "Drac's opinion". I've edited my post accordingly. Yeah, I know you were all extremely concerned about it. Yep, it's all about the 5200 for me. It's the best system released by the REAL Atari. Although, man, the machine that might have been if the 7800 could have come out in 1984 as originally planned, with all of its planned peripherals as well, instead of the watered-down version that belatedly appeared. And, if the system had been pushed to show what it could really do, since apparently it outshone the NES in every area but sound. Here's a couple of quotes from a review of the 7800 by "Dracmania" (DracIsBack?) at Epinions.com: "I loved the 7800, though like any system, it has strengths and weaknesses. It's strengths are in the graphical area. While the NES had a 52 colour palette, the Atari 7800 had 256 colours. And while the NES could display 13 of those colours on screen at one time, the 7800 could place 25 colours on screen simultaniously. The 7800 had higher resolution too - it could displayed 160 x 240 or 320 x 240 resolutions whereas the NES could not go beyond 256 x 240 pixels. But the biggest strength in the Atari 7800's corner came it its spectacular animation capabilities. For an 8-bit console, the Atari 7800 could do some impressive stuff. The MARIA graphics chip employed by the 7800 ran at over 7 mhz (blazing fast by 8-bit standards) and literally destroyed the Nintendo and Sega machines when it came to sprite manipulation. Sprite flickering almost never happened on the 7800 and some games such as Xevious, Desert Falcon, Dark Chambers and others would manipulate dozens of sprites without flicker or slowdown. Other games were able to use MARIA's speed for great 8-bit effects. Tower Toppler featured 3D rotating towers to climb and also 6-layered parallax scrolling in the underwater sequences. Ballblazer (from Lucasfilm games) was allegedly written with the Atari 7800 in mind and featured terrific split-screen 3-D animation. All terrific stuff on an 8-bit console." "Atari had cheap owners at the time who chinced on game development in order to sell 7800 games cheaply. This caused many consumers to believe that the Atari 7800 simply wasn't capable of playing Nintendo-quality games. The real problem was that the Tramiels complained when programmers programmed games that required extensive memory chips. Most early 7800 titles were typically 32K to 48K whereas early Nintendo and Sega games were usually 128K to 256K. Atari eventually smartened up and began releasing 128K Atari 7800 titles like the 18-level sidescrolling, Scrapyard Dog; the 32-level racer, Fatal Run; the 26-level gauntlet clone, Dark Chambers; and the arcade adventure, Midnight Mutants. But by that time Nintendo and Sega had moved on to 384K and 512K games and Atari decided to move away from the 7800 toward the Lynx." What a waste of graphics potential... Now, what was the reasoning behind using inferior sound technology for the 7800? Why would Atari want to saddle their next-generation system with sound that wasn't even as good as their last system? WHY did they use the 2600 sound chip??? That makes absolutely no sense at all.

Yes, but there seems to be plenty of interest at this forum for other systems newer than the Atari 2600, like, say, the Atari 7800, and the Sega Master System. For instance, I made a post about the Sega Power Base Converter, and got lots of responses within a short time. Anyway, just an observation.

My there are a lot of "opinions" being passed along as fact here. :wink: I think I'll change my sig to say something about the 7800 smacking around the 5200 and enjoying it. I do like the 5200, but not as much as some ... Couldn't it go without saying that it's Gunstarhero's opinion? After all, he's saying it, and it's difficult to prove anything as subjective as that anyway. That's why products can claim they're the best, and not get sued. Anyway, in the area of sound, the 5200 TOTALLY kicks the 7800's ass all over the playground, and that IS a fact. The 5200 uses superior technology for sound.

Hmmmm...didn't realize there was a bias against the old NES at this forum. Actually, I am signed up there, and had already posed this same question.

Thanks everyone! All the info I needed. Interesting about some games requiring the SMS pads...I would have thought that, since the Genesis pads have more buttons than the SMS pads, they would have been able to cover everything. Guess I'll have to pick up a couple. Anyway, I'm really excited about checking out the SMS games...I've never ever played them before. Nobody I knew had a SMS when I was younger--everyone had the big NES. From what I've been hearing, I think I really may have been missing out on a great system.

Aw, come on...nobody's got any info on NES storage cases?

Thanks guys! I'll put this nifty item on my list right away then! Oh wait...one more question: can you use SMS-exclusive peripherals with the Power Base converter, like the 3-D setup and the light gun?

I'm looking to upgrade from the crappy RF cable & switch, and on eBay the 8-pin-to-RCA cables are going for $9.99. I can't get this cable at Radio Shack. Is there a better/cheaper place to get these than eBay? Also, the ones on eBay are mono, with one video and one audio RCA plug. Is there a stereo version available, with one video and two audio RCA plugs?

So, I'm looking for a Sega Power Base Adapter to play SMS carts on my Genesis, and I seem to hear that there is an often-missing screw that helps hold the unit in place on the Genesis. Is it possible to use the unit without this screw, if I can't find one that includes it?

Raindog, re: the Jakks 2600 joystick, before you pick it up you might want to read this painstakingly detailed review: http://www.backntime.net/Atari%20Interacti...Frame10in1.html The key bit for me in this review is: "Retrogamers will be disappointed to hear that the "10-In-1" game has altered colors, altered gameplay, occasional jerky framerates, and poor control schemes. In short, the "10-In-1" unit does not do a good job of representing the original 2600 titles." And, this is all explained in detail. The sounds are also often wrong. Apparently no substitute at all for the real deal. Although, building Atari 2600 games into a 2600 joystick is undeniably brilliant. As I said, back to the drawing board, and this time give us the ORIGINAL BLOODY ROMS and LEAVE OUT THE PADDLE GAMES!!! And build a separate unit around a paddle controller.

So, I was wondering if anyone had the dope on exactly what different NES console storage options have there been over the years? I believe there's a nylon carrying bag, a plastic carrying case, etc., but does anyone know all of them, the names of them, and the manufacturers thereof? Pics, possibly? Cartridge storage options? Is there an NES site out there that lists this information for posterity? I looked on the web for a long time, and came up with nothing. I need to know what to look for. I just picked up an Atari Game Center (like the one I used to have as a child, sigh...) for my 2600, and I'd like a similar set-up for my NES, preferably with the Nintendo logo.

Aw, man, I thought I'd get at least one reply to my disgustingly passionate post...besides my own, that is...

You're kidding, right? Donkey Kong Country at Best Buy? That is a SNES game, isn't it? Or did they update it for GameCube? Please tell me you're kidding.