Dones

IMO Actraiser was the game that had me saying "How did they do that?" on the SNES. A release title and definite a system showcaser. Something similar happened when I saw Battle Arena Toshinden on the PSX. It was also a release title and a system showcaser. Mario 64 had me impressed in the same way. It was very ground breaking back in 1996.

Yes, but only those who are knowledeable enough will be able to tell the difference. In those days, computer terms like bit, byte and their acronyms were used very loosely by advertisers, sometimes incorrectly, which caused a lot of confusion.

Back in the 80's and early 90's, bits became a marketting term. It was common to see it used in commercials and ads. We were sold on the idea that more bits = more power and better graphics. Some (if not many) of the marketed ads used the bit term liberally, changing it to fit their needs but creating a lot of confusion. For example, the atari jaguar questionable "bittage" that VidGameKing said. Another example: company X would say their game cartridge has 128 Mbits of power, because counting it in bits sounds a lot bigger that counting it in bytes. For most people this doesn't mean much.

http://www.dcemulation.com/ The page is very similar to atariage, but for dreamcast fans. It offers news, faqs, and lot's of legal stuff to download. They also have a very active forum.

You could blame it on the somewhat laggy control response. Many times you would press the right key at the right time, but the game would not register it. All of this is fixed in Space Channel 5 Part 2 though. Still, only fans of the game/genre should only apply. Has anyone seen the japanese commercial? It's available for download at liksang. I think Donkey Konga will be a great rythm game. I read Nintendo has plans to release future music packs. Big N was smart in selling the game + konga controller as a combo for the price of a game (about $60). This is something that hurt SEGA when they released Samba de Amigo separate from the maracas (which alone went for about $100) at the time of its release.

Jasoco, maybe you can talk to the clerk/manager at the store to let you use the $5 credit on something else.

What works for me is that I open the cart with a security bit and clean the contacts with a pencil eraser. Top loaders are a great collector's item. Personally I like the small design, specially the dog bone controller. The only small nitpick is the signal quality always have these "invisible bars" (original NES doesn't suffer from this).

I think it would be a good idea to have some sort of videogame exhibit at the Smithsonian where people could see, hear (or even play) old games. In that context it would be feasible to mention or some well known designers, like Mr. Crane, Darling Brothers (not sure if that's the right name) or Mr. Miyamoto.

I read somewhere that Pong, Pac-Man, Dragon's Lair and Virtua Fighter are part of the Smithsonian's permanent collection. Can anyone confirm?

Unfortunately, no. It's a mediocre game. The game tries to imitate the original's gameplay but falls short. The story is you are the son of Jason, the kid who originally drove in the NES game. You go around with the hover car exploring caves looking for dungeons. There you get off the car and control Jason's son. These parts are extremely monotonous and difficult: you need to open door A, which opens after deactivating force field B wich is powered by generator C. Open the door, get the power-up or fight the level's boss, rinse and repeat. The exploring parts with the car are frustrating because of bad camera angles. A lot of times you will find yourself having to make precise, leap of faith jumps or hovers wich would be easier to do if the camera angle were a bit better and didn't move so much. Failing these jumps usually means death or having to repeat the level's long road to the same ledge. The boss fights are very unfair. Bosses do an awful amount of damage. If you die then you have to load your last save, which means you start back inside your car and have to do the "disable the force field blocking the door" routine all over again. The loading times are very long. The game loads every 3-5 minutes, pausing the game every time you move from section to section, which interfere with gameplay. If you load a save it takes longer, so that adds to the frustration if you die. Graphics are OK, not a lot of drawing distance and mostly looking at dark caves. You'll spend most of your time looking at the rear of the car. From time to time you'll get a cutscene, but nothing to be excited at. If recommend you play this game with cheat codes. Specially try to get unlimited hover and life energy (you'll need it). Also play on a faster CD-ROM, like on a PS2 or emulator.

@ussexplorer: MCM Electronics (http://www.mcmelectronics.com) sells them online. You can also call them at 1-800-543-4330. Mention part #22-1145 for 3.8 mm and #22-1150 for 4.5 mm. Both are priced $3.59 each.

The actress who played the role passed away a few years ago.

How about Samba de Amigo ver. 2000? AFAIK it only was released in Japan. The menus are japanese but the songs are labeled in English. The extra songs are great (Theme of Rocky and Daytona's "Let's Go Away" to name a few). If you are into gun games, i am not sure but I think there was a sequel to Death Crimson OX that was only released in Japan.

No Space Channel 5 Part 2? Just kidding Nice collection. Looking at all those in one place is cool.

It looks and plays just like it's supposed to. The colors are a bit dim when compared to a computer monitor, but it's very trivial. Unfortunately it doesn't save your highscores. I wonder if the guys at Lucasarts based this port on MAME code.

Hello there: I have seen this problem discussed in the "Hardware Repair and Modification" forum at www.dcemulation.com message boards. Hope this helps: http://www.dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2007

You have asked the same question three times already. Why don't you do it yourself?

The sprites spill over the border because we forgot to clean the GRP0/1 registers. The TIA gives priority to the sprites so that they are drawn on top of the playfield. I guess we'll learn to play with this as we plow ahead. To fix this we have to clear the GRP registers before drawing the top and bottom playfield bars. In my case I moved the SLEEP and RESPx code after the setting of the PFx registers and just before the MiddleLines label. The player graphics shifted a little bit to the right. I guess this happened because some processing time was spent clearing the PFx registers. This might be a bit obvious but I am going to ask anyway: So storing a value in RESPx is only to set it off? Can I use any value for this then?

I bought an USB adapter from ebay and it works great. It looks like a small blue-ish triforce and takes in 2 controllers in the same unit. It has a small lightbulb that lights up when a pad is plugged. It works with both PS1 and PS2 pads. The unit comes with drivers on a floppy, but Windows ME and XP works fine without them. Lik-Sang has a 4-ports model (great for playing MAME).

I have that same model (#1001) and have experienced skipping problems (it hasn't malfunctioned like the original poster's psx though). I did the POT tweak and it made a big difference. I recommend you do it, but as the page at psxtune says, be very careful when adjusting the pot as it only requires a small adjustment.

You could get an original playstation just for the collectible factor. The older models accomodates for serial port-based GameSharks/Action Replay, which are useful for those into PSX homebrewing. Model 1001 has built in RCA plugs. It's convenient but the laser unit on those models is quite problematic.

Hello everyone, this is my first time posting here. I have been following the tutorials and have been learning a lot. I wrote a free, small Win9x/XP ultility called AssymRead. It translates windows bmp files into text data for DASM. It offers a simple GUI and some customization features. Hope you find it useful. assym_reader_v11.zip