Shaggy the Atarian

"Problematic" is code for "incompetent." LOL

It's not appealing to everyone, but it's made some companies an awful lot of money over the years By everything I've gathered, the Amico is targetting a casual audience. They love stuff like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Party, Just Dance, etc. A lot of that stuff looks really dumb to hardcore gamers, but all of those games have sold to the tune of millions. I would be surprised if the Amico eventually doesn't have something along those lines (if not from INTV direct, then a 3rd party probably will)

Given how they set up the tease, it's a new version of Wii Fit or Wii Sports. Something great for casuals (it might even be the "Quality of Life" thing that Nintendo kept talking about years ago). Either way, it's probably going to target the demographics that made the Wii a huge success and will shift more Switches, but they'll still sell plenty of their other games.

THIS IS PERFECT ^

When the VCS is like that, it looks like it's a tray to hold condiments for your tacos

Oh Lucas, you protest too much. Trolls live fulfilling and fun lives full of tacos and laughs.

If you're competing with Dave & Busters or Chuck E. Cheeses, then sure, but if you have the right location with a high amount of foot traffic and are wise in how you buy games for a specific audience that is interested in gaming in your area, then you can make do with a lot less than that. As the old mantra goes, Location, Location, Location (and a good landlord that doesn't hate arcades and fun)! That alone makes one of the biggest differences. When I used to sell arcade machines, I helped a lot of arcades get running on amounts like $50k, $80k, $100k, $250k,, etc. If you're looking at doing a retrocade, then many of those games can be had for cheap (the challenge is in maintenance though, and the pickings are very dependent on what other people might be selling out of their collections. Supply is continually dwindling on 80's/90's games, while demand remains high). Some have reported doing really well on that model, but it's not a guarantee at success.

It's been a busy weekend, so I forgot to post, but my JagSD arrived on Saturday. I was #61, if that helps anyone know where they might be at in receiving theirs. I uploaded the latest firmware, and put on a few games, finding that it's working great! So far no issues - although I only was able to test a few games out really quick, nothing substantial. Thanks again Saint, just like the LynxSD, it's a quality product.

Hmm, what is going to be more relevant in 2021, the VCS or tacos? You know the answer.

Here's what's quoted on that YakYak Thread; Leonard didn't say that the kits "never" worked, but that the Panther chips themselves weren't stable. I wouldn't discount him on the Panther, as he is one of few people who was there for it. Still, it's always possible that he mis-remembers something about the functionality, since it's been a long time.

I wouldn't give up on them so fast, code updates can completely change how a game plays. I don't know what code you might have played on, but they're only at 0.87 (machines shipped with 0.86, 87 added a lot of fixes/changes). I would expect several updates to come along and do that. I know that happened with the Munsters, and heard from a few people who liked the game more after that.

"We're excited to inform you that in an effort to better connect with our fans, that ATARI is back! What this means will come to light over the next several months, but we can only fulfill everything that our fans and partners want with a new crowdfunding campaign. Never having used crowdfunding before, we're excited to start this new chapter in company history. By contributing to this new IndieGoGo campaign, you'll receive a thank you letter from Atari (expected delivery date: Dec: 2025) and the knowledge that you contributed to gaming history! Higher end backers will receive a letter that uses an 8-bit font instead of Comic Sans. All letters will come with an authentic Atari "Fuji" logo, the most iconic brand logo ever created!" Please note that for any inquiries about a game device called the Atari VCS that you refer to the Wikipedia page about the Atari 2600. We know of no other device to have purported to go by this name, but our lawyers are getting to the bottom of this as we speak!"

At this point, they'd have to do a complete 'mea culpa' (with tacos!) on how it's been handled, along with some actual transparency about what's been going on and why it's *really* been delayed, then pretty much copy Intellivision by showing a strong line-up of games both original and re-envisioned from their increasingly dwindling IP library, and cut the price. Since the chances of that happening are as likely as them meeting their original ship date, I don't think I'll be jumping on the bandwagon anytime soon. I'll instead spend the money on the Amico, unless they somehow become entirely derailed by the time Oct. 2020 rolls around. So "true" Atari fans are brainwashed cultists?

I hadn't seen that before, thanks for sharing! Gotta love arcade boards that had massive stacks of ROMs on them (making it even more fun when one of them would go bad to fix it). I do wonder how many frames per second would be added to stock Jag games running on any of these boards, but the amount of work it would probably take to port them over would be a hassle. Of course, if a vice-versa was done to get Freeze running on a stock Jag, that would make for a better puzzle game than FlipOut! I run into Eugene about once a year at arcade trade shows, he's one of the only arcade execs who I'll see go around playing other people's games. I'll have to ask him what he thinks about Defender 2k (or if he remembers it He's not always fond of talking about "old sh*t" as he calls it, as he prefers people talk about the stuff his company is up to now. But, he is easy going).

Per Leonard Tramiel on the Atari Museum FB(back in 2017 I think it was), he stated that the Object Processor of the Jaguar was created to be efficient in using as little RAM as possible, their workaround to high costs of memory chips in those days. Granted, I don't know exactly how it did that, but that is what he stated, while debunking a number of other rumors surrounding the Panther (like saying that Raiden and Trevor Mcfur were in development for it). The 7800 did have a separate line for adding more RAM though, several commercial release cartridges did do that. Still, Atari didn't foot the bill for it when it was always needed. (Keep in mind though, the CoJag was under the guise of Atari Games, a separate entity from Atari Corp. Also being in the arcade business, they could've populated the boards with 8MB, if the game in question needed it)

Now I need to pull the A51 board I have out of mothballs and look at it more closely I imagine that Max Force also only has 4MB, but I wonder about the prototype games. Galloping Ghost Arcade in IL has Freeze, although this doesn't look like it would need more than 4MB (nice and smooth animations though):

I've heard of one company in China that still makes CRTs, but the problem is that there just isn't a market demand there to warrant the wants of a relatively small pool of collectors and operators. While I totally get the desire, as I've not been happy with any LCD conversions I've *had* to do (running an arcade, there have been some tubes that I simply cannot find parts for, or it becomes very cost prohibitive to do, with the repair on the CRT running 3 times higher than what the game makes over the course of a year), I would like to see more investment go into making better/faster CGA-to-VGA conversion boards. I've heard of devices that provide an incredible image conversion, but they all seem to be made in limited quantities, then are impossible to find. There are new gaming LCD monitors that use tech where the input lag is essentially on par with CRTs; the video I'll link below is two years old and claimed a model was beating a CRT. Either way, display tech on LCDs has improved, but the crap Chinese conversion boards have not been so hot (I tested out a 144HZ gaming monitor on an UMK3, but because of the conversion board, it doesn't take advantage of the monitor's features)

Ah thanks for the correction. I had read that as 6MB of RAM max in the past.

RIP Mark. Like many others, I only really knew him from posts on this forum, but he always came across as a great guy. Perhaps in one of the upcoming 7800 homebrews, a tribute can be included into the game for him.

Oh John. I really do hope he has some quick access emotional support when Christmas comes around and it's VCS-less

Got my order shipment confirmation this morning. Now for the 1-4 week wait Thanks SainT!

Clint posted a byte from one of the Area 51 devs who mentioned something about the 68020 being on a separate bus. But the system itself only had 4MB of RAM, while the Jaguar spec always claimed it could address as much as 6MB (a moot point since the system came with 2 and no one's ever made anything that would bump it up to 6, in part, by my understanding, that it would be slow to fetch data through the cartridge bus. If it's possible to add more RAM to the CoJag, that depends on some things.). Area 51 boards did come with the 020, while Maximum Force and the eventual Max Force/A51 combo boards would feature the R3000.

Looks like it could be fun, bit of a Breakout or Arkanoid vibe, but with more dynamic blocks, physics.

That person would be Clint :D I have an A51 board that isn't in a cabinet at the moment. I need to fix an issue with it that keeps one of the guns from calibrating (it's a board issue, not the guns). Here's an example of one of the many Compact Flash kits that are out there to convert the boards over from old IDE HDDs. Any games developed for it wouldn't have to be limited to light-gun games either; since it connects through JAMMA, you could do a standard 3/4 button joystick game too. Makes sense. I would guess that the situation is the same on the CoJag, with the 68020/R3k being stable and without the bugs that T&J are known for. Then as Clint mentioned, they designed the board to avoid certain issues with the Jag chipset (sounds like the 68020 runs on a separate bus? then it has it's own cache)

Speaking of pigeons in games, an update has been posted for the upcoming arcade version of the bizarre party game, Nippon Marathon Turbo. The arcade version has a new character that lets you play as a...wrestler with a pigeon head. Where the point of the game is to run a marathon crashing through obstacles, they should throw some piles of Atari VCS shaped boxes in there for kicks: