Jstick

This is great, I have a backlog of games I’d like to play but will probably never get through before I die. Now I can just have an A.I. play through them all

Yeah, figured as much. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with 30 Asteroids/Combat/Missile Command carts.

Will you reimburse shipping costs from Canada?

Of course it happened... in fact it was Kubrik’s best work ?

My father dragged me to the first screening on opening day. He had read something about it in the newspaper, but I took one look at the poster and thought it was a boring cowboy film. Boy, was I wrong. As for the game, I had it for years before finally figuring out how to beat it one day with a friend.

I laughed out loud just reading the thread title

Wow, mind blown! This looks amazing, and the gameplay is so smooth and spot-on! If I had to pick my #1 wish for an unreleased 2600 game, this would be it, and here it is, unbelievable! Great job to all involved. Up till now Lady Bug has been my favourite 2600 homebrew, but I suspect Galaga might top that... In any case, I’m very happy this was kept a secret, because otherwise the wait would have killed me

CX40 all the way. Anything else is just weird. I have 2 from Best Electronics with the PCB and silicone boot upgrades, hopefully these will stay in better shape than my original sticks. I am interested in trying the microswitch board posted here in the forum though.

I played a ton of Commando Raid and Entombed back in the day, more than some of the more popular games that I owned at the time.

Emulation is awesome, especially for preservation. There is absolutely no doubt that it is ultimately the way forward for the future, whether via software, FPGA, or some other hybrid hardware solution. But I'll be hanging on to all my 2600 stuff until either it dies or I die

That’s quite a subjective statement you’ve made Cartridges are still very much magical, and they absolutely do offer a better experience even today... FOR ME! Sticking cartridges into an original VCS with original controllers is integral to my enjoyment of the system (and original cartridges at that, despite owning a Harmony Cart). I will admit that for practical reasons I’ve come around to using ROMs for other systems, although I still enjoy using my original Amiga as well.

MiSTer has zero lag on its analog output (which will put out the equivalent of the original signal to a CRT). As far as the HDMI output, the scaler currently produces less than a frame of lag (using the vsync_adjust=2 setting). Of course the particular HDMI display you use may add its own lag, depending on the model. MiSTer is currently very much a work in progress, but overall is quite promising. Some systems are almost flawless, however the 2600 core still needs some work to properly support all games. I am using MiSTer for NES, SNES, Genesis, PC-Engine, Amiga, the Atari 8-bit computers, and the arcade cores it supports; and I am very happy with the experience (especially with regards to input lag). For the 2600, I’m currently using original hardware and carts.

Space Shuttle

Garry Kitchen’s first game... it’s amazing what a difference there is between this and Keystone Kapers/Pressure Cooker, both of which were released only a year later!

Probably like many who are hanging around this forum, I’ve been a gamer since the home version of Pong was released. I have owned almost every console up to the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U, at which point I became disenchanted with modern gaming. In terms of strictly playing games, I would say my favourite consoles of all time are the original Playstation, Super Nintendo, and Dreamcast, in that order. However, I would say the 2600 is the console that has had the most impact on me (in an almost emotional way), and to this day I’m still endlessly fascinated with it. I think it’s awesome that amazing homebrew games are still being released, and would love to live in some parallel world where the Atari VCS was still a thing. The thing is, I’m not really sure why this is the case. Why is there still a connection with this primitive outdated machine 40 years later? I wonder if anyone else feels the same way, and if so, can you articulate why?

Darn, for a second I thought I had a rare prototype or something

That label is amazing, it uses artwork from the Trend scratch n' sniff stickers of the early '80s! (Well, except for the deformed E.T. they stuck in there)

Speaking of which, has anyone ever compiled a list with the best recommended variation per game? Having a single reference for all games would be a lot easier than digging out a specific manual when playing these games infrequently. (On a side note, I always found the idea of variations weird. I mean isn't the whole point of almost every game from that time to get a high score, just like in the arcade? With variations, it makes it almost impossible to compare scores with family/friends: "Hey, I just got 24100 points, on variation 33 with left difficulty B!"

I won't have access to my JR until next week, but I'll test the mentioned games when I have a chance (Although I recall Kool-aid man working fine on that system).

It's not on your list, but I have an NTSC JR that exhibits a small visual issue in Spider Fighter. There was a thread on here regarding others having the same issue, and someone posted a patched PAL rom that fixed the problem (Which I couldn't test on my North American system).

NOTE: I have a few Activision carts labeled "International Edition", but they are NTSC versions (I believe these were for the Canadian market). One of them has an 'N' sticker on it, but the others don't. So that is most likely not a reliable way to determine PAL/NTSC.

Maybe, but they're wayyyy ahead of themselves in marketing, so it all balances out.

Nice, I'm going to try this version out as I've never properly sat down to figure out the original, despite owning it since it was originally released... Thanks!

Exactly! Why anyone purchasing a book on the history of a particular video game would want to hear about Mr. Robinett's current political opinions baffles me. I don't care if he writes a full chapter that is 100% in line with my personal beliefs, I don't want to hear it. The space is better used for discussion of the actual topic, the thing that paying readers are interested in. Anything outside of that belongs in a blog post on a website.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the tiny (and dying) niche of original vcs fans here is actually not the target market, and that this 'preview' is aimed at a younger audience who: a) are gamers who are mostly ignorant of the history of the hobby before they were born, b) read (or watched) Ready Player One, and c) enjoy having virtue signalling injected into every aspect of their life.