Disco Scottie

The games might be awful, but I'm digging that box artwork. Looks like a bunch of alernate-universe Atari images...

Michelle Wii? (posted for legal proof so I can claim my cut if they do this)

That's very cool you still have a guitar like that from your youth! I still have my second guitar, an Ibanez Paul Stanley Iceman (original, not a reissue). I worked at a music store the first year I was playing so I had the opportunity to get my hands on lots of axes. If I had kept everything I had from back then, I could make a small fortune on eBay. But it's not really about the money, it's about making a connection with an instrument. When you find a good LP, it's like heaven... and that's coming from a guy who owns four Paul Reed Smiths! Just to keep this on-topic, I haven't had the chance to play Guitar Hero yet. I have a feeling I'm gonna be annoyed by it, since I'll be trying to play the actual guitar parts...

What year is your LP? I'm guessing late 70s or early 80s? I loves me some Custom... I need to get another, I had a '71 in the mid 80s, which I stupidly got rid of.

Bummer about the Tron setup... I guess I won't be able to play it properly unless I spring for a custom controller. Maybe I can get an old Logitech Wingman Warrior with the spinner... I wonder if there's a USB adapter for that? Thanks for trying it out. At least I know I can get the adapter for the original XBOX pad and make it work for a lot of games!

That helps to answer my main question. If you'd be so kind as to be my test subject, let me know if you can set it up so the layout is as follows for Tron: Left analog (or D-pad) - joystick Right analog - spinner Right trigger - fire button And while you're at it, let me know if you can use the two analogs for dual joystick games (Robotron, Crazy Climber). Or you can tell me to go buy one and figure it out myself.

Does the old controller, used with the adapter, work on Tron and other spinner games? I've seen an adapter at Lik-Sang, I guess I could get that.

Has anyone used the new 360 controller with MAME yet? I'm curious to know if it works, and can be programmed to allow the analog sticks to work in Tron, Tempest, and other games that have unique controls. Would be nice to use both analogs to play Robotron too...

It's about humans and humanity.

I can't be of any help with the date, but I do know it was Sears here in Orlando, Florida that first had Pac-Man in stock. I vividly recall being upset I had to get the ugly Sears label version of the game I had been waiting forever for. Turned out the label was the last thing I should have been upset about...

We tend to stick with either team or free-for-all Slayer, but Oddball and King Of The Hill are good for a nice change of pace. We usually have at least six people, so we do lots of 3-on-3 team action. The most we've had at one time was ten... I'd love to do a full sixteen-person. That would be very cool. I fogot to mention in my reply to Foxy how dedicated our bunch is - every week at least two people lug along not only ther Xboxes, but also 20" to 27" TVs to complete the setup! The funniest thing in my mind is how many systems I helped sell by getting people into Halo, and I'm a hardcore Mac guy. Steve Jobs would be very dissappointed if he ever finds out.

When I have a good night, I can own with the sniper rifle on Sidewinder. And for "rockets only", I dig Prisoner. Complete insane devastation in a small confined area.

EDIT... double post, sorry!

Halo is one of the greatest games of all time, for one simple reason... Multiplayer. I bought my Xbox on Release Day (11/15/01) and Halo was the first game I picked up. Never enjoyed the FPS genre, as I'm one of those wimps that suffers from motion sickness. But the smoothness of the physics engine made it much more pleasant. So I had a good time playing the single player campaign, until one fateful night. The first Gamenight. Three of my buddies had started playing Madden on the PS2, and they needed a fourth to round out the weekly event. I was happy to oblige, and to show my thanks for being invited I brought my 'Box and Halo to show them what the system was like. I knew there was a multiplayer setting, but hadn't ever tried it. That was early 2002. Since then, I've been responsible for six people buying the system just so they could be part of our Halo addiction. We still get together every Saturday night and spend an average of four hours with the game (just did this past weekend). We've tried just about every FPS that's come out, and none have been anywhere near the level of perfect that Halo is. Say what you want about the flaws of the single player game, but there is no better way to spend an evening than duking it out via LAN party goodness. I get all shaky just thinking about what Halo 2 will be like online... And for the record, our most-played maps are: Hang 'Em High Blood Gulch Chill Out Damnation Sidewinder Longest And turn OFF the radar - makes for a much more intense and rewarding experience.

Is it just me or does the spaceship kinda look like a crazed Pac-Man with Jaws teeth? The teeth are more pronounced on the left label. Maybe there's a subliminal Spielberg film reference thing going on...

Sears is it for me too... not sure when I was first introduced, probably '78, maybe late '77. I can still visualize the path to the endcap display - Pass the catalog counter at the door, scoot by the hardware department, and bam! There was Target Fun in all its beautiful glory. There was something magically mesmerizing about those shapes on the TV. I was hooked right away. Played it quite a bit in the store with my dad, but I guess it was way too expensive back then, even for a spoiled-rotten only child... my dream of VCS ownership didn't come true until '81. And then poor Sears got the short end of the deal, as my mom found the best price at a place I think was called Leeds. I'm thinking it was about $140, does that sound right for that year? We stopped at Zayres on the way home to pick up Missile Command, Space Invaders and Indy 500. Not a bad way to kick things off! So I'll bend the thread a little and ask this question: how long did you go from knowing about the 2600, to actually having one? Who suffered the longest? Took me about 3 years, give or take a few months.

Yeah, I know where Ridgewood is... your parents should be ashamed! My mom drove me all the way from south of downtown Orlando to get up there. They wouldn't take you down the street?!?

My schooling was Pineloch Elementary, Memorial Junior (before it became Middle), Oak Ridge High... none of that silly higher-ed stuff for me, thanks. I do know a lot of people with UCF connections. We're talking '81-84 range, so if you were active then, you missed out in your own backyard! The store was on 436, kinda between 427 and 17-92. I live in Longwood now, and drive by there all the time.

Wow, this is going to be my first post here, and I actually get to add something of value (I hope)... There were not one but two locations that rented 2600 games during the heyday here in the Orlando area. Waaaaay before there was a Blockbuster. The first one was a video store that also did VHS stuff, and the other was Video Game World, which as you can guess from the name only dealt in game consoles. I got one of the very first ColecoVision systems in town from them, but that's a story for another post... I can't begin to recall what the cost was, or how long you could keep them for (I was 11 at the time, and stuff like that wasn't really important). I just know the drive to get to Video Game World felt like forever, since we had to go from south Orlando all the way to Altamonte Springs - about 30 minutes one way, an eternity at that age. And with that, Disco Scottie had accidentally introduced himself to AtariAge...