freewheel

As far as I know, Super Pros have the same chips. At least in any capacity that matters or is detectable. The PSG changed a few times over the years but I don't know that anyone's come up with a software method to determine those. I could be wrong and missed an opportunity here. It definitely can tell a TutorPro, though

It is, and it's the exact size (2.3mm). I spent a fair bit of time researching to ensure I got the perfect fit (you'll see many people claiming it's 2.1mm - that will work, but will eventually strip your screws).

Sure is! Your name's next to it.

27 is yours!

Edit: George called to inform me that it's $54.95, NOT $54.99. I've just added the 4 cent discount to the original post, for those that were on the fence about purchasing.

14 it is!

13 is taken. How about 14?

After one heck of a crazy 2018... In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Intellivision game console, Freewheeling Games is proud to finally announce the release of FW Diagnostics, the first diagnostic cartridge intended for home use. This cart provides a complete checkup of the control, audio, and video components, and comes with tools to help adjust your Intellivision - and television - to run your games as they were always meant to be ran. But I think George can explain better than I can: This is a serial numbered release, limited to 125 copies in honour of the "Original 125". Copies come CIB with manual, 4(!) overlays, triangle screwdriver, spudger, Tune-Up Team membership card, and color calibration/tool instruction card (not shown in commercial). Pricing varies by serial, of course (all pricing in US Dollars): 1 - $200 + shipping 2-10 - $100 + shipping (first 10 copies come with a bonus extra screwdriver and spudger!) 11-125 - $54.95 + shipping Shipping is $12 to Canada, $15 to the US and international destinations. I can fit 2 copies in a box for the same shipping cost. Sorry, international orders do not include tracking (it's literally $42US for that option!). For right now, I'm just taking serial number reservations. I won't be shipping games until early February (I need to visit Hawaii first), so I'll invoice people and set up PayPal ordering on my website at that point. I just wanted to give the AA crew first dibs on their favourite serial number First come, first served. I'll put together a list of what's been taken in a few days, once the usual suspects claim the usual numbers. Send me your emails via PM if you want me to invoice you and ship as soon as I get back! Oh, and #1 is on hold pending a discussion, but feel free to put your hat in the ring if you're interested. You never know The commercial should explain what this is all about, but please ask any questions that come up. To be clear, this is NOT a chip-level diagnostic, in the sense that it will tell you which RAM chip is broken, etc. This is aimed at the average person. It's something that conceivably could have been sold in stores back in 1980. And it does more than MTE-201 - MUCH more, if you ask me. So just ask, if you're curious. There are a lot of tests and calibration routines packed into a few menus.

Fine, if you insist. Give me a few minutes and I'll see what I can come up with. (Hint: keep watching the forum tonight)

So.. are there any new games coming out this year? I've been kinda busy working on a project, so I haven't paid much attention. If not, maybe I should get working on one?

Random observation: VOICE.PLAYING will very briefly reset to 0 a few times, during something like this. I had to come up with a clever trick to determine if it's ACTUALLY done playing even if we see VOICE.PLAYING = 0. VOICE PLAY voice_sample_long voice_sample_long: VOICE ONE,TWO,THREE,FOUR,FIVE,SIX,SEVEN,EIGHT,NINE,TEN,ELEVEN,TWELVE,THIRTEEN,FOURTEEN,FIFTEEN,SIXTEEN,SEVENTEEN,EIGHTEEN,NINETEEN,TWENTY,PA4,0

You know how old games don't really take that long to play? Like, some you can finish in half an hour? The only answer here is obvious: Desert Bus.

I can't stop wondering why nurmix is so high on Internet Explorer.

Nice. Obviously TBD, but it was just something that occurred to me. 8-bit stuff is all the rage right now and will be for the foreseeable future. I think we need a competition. To try to come up with the most addictive, must-have legacy side game. Something that actually drives console sales. Unlikely, but then again so was Flappy Bird. People are impossible to predict. You should consider some kind of sales incentive program. Sell 10,000 (100,000?) copies of a legacy game, get a bonus - as that's obviously driving console sales with those kind of numbers. I bet nanochess could come up with some ideas here

Related. I know the intention is that everything is exclusive. So here's a rather niche curveball: An original hardware game, that could only run on this - and an original Intellivision. Would releasing for both platforms be allowed? Or is exclusivity total? It'd be hard to decide. Gouge cmart for a gold-plated CIB, or sell a few thousand download copies.

To add my 2 cents on a few things, because I'm a bit in the middle ground on stuff: 1. Cart port: add-on only. We're talking a likely market of 4-500 people here. Low thousands at the absolute most optimistic estimate. It's extremely low value if the production numbers and market size are anywhere close to what's being hinted at. This could easily sell as a $20-30 add-on. I'd pony up at that level, just for the fun of it, even if my carts almost never leave storage anymore. 2. Games on SD/homebrew/etc. Full disclosure: I hack everything. I enjoy somewhat open hardware and I love being able to load/save ROMs in ways the manufacturer never intended. And I think it's entirely unneeded here. It's a very small group of people who care about this. The larger group that might care, only do it to avoid paying for games. If you open up virtually ANY ability to add games via physical media, or copy them off for "backups" - this WILL get compromised. Quickly. So long as there's no always-on Internet required (and that's been "confirmed"), I don't mind download-only for games. Not at these prices. AES256 encrypt the SD cards and allow for full-card backup, perhaps, if people are worried about the inevitable "company goes out of business" situation. 3. Cost: $150US sounds about right. This is more than an (S)NES Classic ($80). But it's not a brand new Playstation ($400 on release). It'll end up around $200 Canadian which is pretty much where I guessed it at. 4. E10+ rating max: Just be careful of being viewed as "kids only". Nintendo has suffered from this through several generations, even when they had some pretty 18+ content on their systems. And they're a big kahuna that suffered in the marketplace as a result. Otherwise I think it's a fantastic idea. If nothing else, it's a unique niche. And an easier way to create a sense of "killer apps". Not everyone wants to play Call of Duty on every device. 5. Don't think it's talked about, but I really hope a handheld is being talked about for the longer term. My eyes can't really do the small screens anymore but the handheld market is soon to be under-served. Not sure how it'd work with the controllers in mind, but...

What's the overall thinking on indie homebrews in the original store? I'm talking about us casual hobbyists (ie: me)? Specifically on the "old" side, the $1-2 games? You could go the Apple Store route of "eh, anything's good enough so long as we get our 30%" and end up with 300 fart apps. Great for developers looking to make a quick buck. Less so for quality control. Or the highly-controlled, approval-first method. With more than just a click-through licensing agreement. Possible fees required to get a title hosted. Keeps the quality up, but could shut out a lot of otherwise talented people. INTV homebrew has such a miniscule market that even though people think that the $50-60 typically charged can be highway robbery... these are a labour of love. And ROM sales are a very, very tiny bit of gravy added on. No one's making more than a few dollars an hour working on these. But $1-2, to a market of tens or hundreds of thousands? With a low enough barrier to entry, it would give folks like me an excuse to really spend time on this.

Well, everything in this scene is generally a "limited run" to begin with. You have to order a certain quantity of everything, and re-ordering small quantities gets expensive quick. But I agree, limiting it to jack up prices is pretty skeezy. It does not cost anywhere close to 150 Euros to produce a boxed release unless you're not doing your homework. That being said, 100 isn't as small of a run as some might think. A lot of games take quite a while to sell even that many copies.

This. 100 times this. I'll also add that there's a massive difference (morally, but not legally) to many people between taking something 35 years old, that's long since made a publisher a profit and has been entirely unavailable at retail for 33 of those years... and something that was created a few months ago, by someone hoping to perhaps sell in the near future. Ignoring the "soulless corporation vs starving hobbyist programmer" side of things, it's also the difference between reproducing Intellivision Donkey Kong in 2018, vs the latest Zelda game. One is serving an under-served hobbyist market, the other is blatantly ripping someone off. They're both owned by soulless corporations, but one is a lot more egregious. And one is a lot more distasteful. Again, morally, not legally. And not everyone holds the same opinion here.

Genuinely curious. I can imagine a male gay strip club. Female, not so much. But I'm sure they exist. Us old guys don't get out much. I hear they have arcade machines in bars again. Who'da thunk?

Because I'm willing to play mild Devil's Advocate here (in the sense that this "honest mistake" seems a little fishy but perhaps someone else is closer to being more honest about a similar mistake)... If any other people are interested in publishing, developing, or otherwise releasing a game based on code on this or any other forum - you're morally, ethically, and legally obligated to at least contact the original author first. Period. End of discussion. Unless it's VERY clearly stated that the code is released under an Open Source license of some sort - and I'm not sure that I've even seen an Intellivision game released this way. Code snippets, yes. Certainly not a partial or entire game. It doesn't matter if it's WIP code. Code released as part of a contest. Sample code that someone shares for fun. You have little to no legal right to simply take that code, tweak it, and sell it. Not even distribute it for free. International copyright law is quite clear on this. And morally, it's just douchey. I can tell you from personal and other experience that many authors would be delighted to have you take their code, maybe improve it, put it on a cart, and release it. With credit and not necessarily a massive payment. Some may even let you do it for free. But you can't simply make that decision for them. Don't be a douche. Respect creators. Thank you

"Gay strip club". Male or female?

We'll have a car, so I can always throw 3 of you idiots in the back if it's a walk. Friday seems optimistic. For some reason I remember being in the show a lot later than that, setting up and playing with Rev's "glue gun".

You have my interest THIS is definitely something that no one's done. Not even attempted or hinted at. Retail space or otherwise. A way to get NEW games for OLD architectures - in an actual, functional, non-raspberry-pi-hackery type way. Sure, people can somewhat faithfully recreate the 8-bit look on virtually anything nowadays. But no one really does it "well". They invariably go too far, and make the games look like what they are - a far more modern game that's skinned to look oldschool. So we have a split - if you want something on consistent hardware with modern outputs, you get these passable fakes. And if you want something that truly could have existed in a retro setting, you're stuck with hard-to-find fragile hardware, finicky emulation, and a whole lot of work to get going. There's never been a plug-and-play system that works worth a damn that has anything new on it (beyond unreleased prototypes like Starfox 2 and the like). As someone who's been into the retrogame/emulation scene for over 2 decades, I'm more than capable of the work necessary to play Intellivision/Atari/NES/whatever on my modern TV. But I honestly don't bother. I'd rather plug in my (S)NES Classic because it's so bloody simple and "just works". Yet I've always craved the ability to easily load up modern, legal homebrew onto them. Just please please please include save states and a rewind option in the emulator. That's something sorely missing from too many of these devices. Nintendo really nailed the emulation enhancement side of things, without making it feel like "not an (S)NES". It's a big part of why their units were so successful, at least to gamers like myself.

Exclusivity is a tricky thing. This isn't 1980 where landing the license for Space Invaders means you can move consoles like mad. If you're a game developer with a killer idea - and I'll focus just on consoles here - you can write and release your game for the Playstation 4 (70+ million customers), Xbone (35+ million), or Switch (probably 20 million and growing rapidly). Or you can choose to dedicate your time and resources to ... an Intellivision. Where a million units sold, let's be honest, would be an unbelievable success. But these will be 2D, indie, family-friendly games, you say! That would have worked 10 years ago, when you'd never see something so "basic" released for the big 3. But today? They all have their app stores, with small/indie developers making a lot of fun games. Basically any game you can imagine, you can write for any of the existing consoles. And sell it to a far bigger market. Now, it's possible that the IE folks will manage to hire developers who create some incredible first party titles. And they may just stumble upon the next Minecraft or similar. But the odds are stacked massively against them. The only way this works is to somehow carve out a unique market space. Some way to make this a "must have" console. Exclusivity isn't the path to success here. Nor is "a game so easy your grandma can play". Those exist. In spades. On many, many platforms. Those moved the Wii because of its gimmick. And phones because everyone already has a phone. Granted - it's VERY early days here. Clearly there's more to their plans than just "make some modern Mario clones and hope for the best". I know nothing other than what's been announced, which is very little so far. So I'm not giving up on this nor trying to shit on it. Far from it. I've just not heard anything other than this being another Ouya. I really hope there's something to come that I can get excited about. I absolutely love the idea of a "second tier" of cheaper, more accessible consoles. If this and the Ataribox can somehow carve out a niche, I'd be absolutely thrilled!