Skippy B. Coyote
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Posts posted by Skippy B. Coyote
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You're very welcome! I will say that it was a journey to get to the point where I was able to let those things go, it certainly was not overnight (though I wish I could claim to possess herculean self-will).
I do understand what you mean about "collector compulsion", as even now I am occasionally tempted to pick up an old system again. Usually I ask myself when I am tempted, "What specific moments do I hope to have with this console?", and "What is the exact reason I have for purchasing this?". If the answers aren't something concrete such as, "I want this system because it has these specific games I can only play on this system, and I will play them often." then I realize it's most likely something I can live without.
I feel that the desire to obtain things isn't so much a selfish first-world desire, but more of a base neurological process. Back when we were hunter-gatherers, we were wired for "the hunt". We set a goal in our minds (obtaining food) then put all our resources towards that end. During the hunt the brain would release doses of dopamine the closer we came to obtaining food, and finally when we did obtain it (gather the berries, down the animal) we received a surge of pleasure as a "reward". These days we don't do much hunting, but our brains are still wired for that drive. So we find other things to hunt for to find the same dopamine releases. That's why almost universally collectors find the hunt more satisfying than whatever particular item they obtain. The good news is we aren't slaves to those impulses. Like anything, with time and continual reinforcement, we can change how we respond to those desires. Even starting as simple as boxing up your least-used system and having a friend or family member store it, well out of your reach may help. What you are doing is slowly reinforcing in your mind that it is okay to be without that system. The longer you go, the less your mind hungers for it. Of course, this also requires that you stop hunting for anything related to that particular system to truly work (i.e. not looking up anything related to the NES for example), but that's part of the effort. At the same time, if you continue collecting for and playing your favorite system(s), you'll still give your brain that thrill of the hunt it is asking for. I'm not a psychologist, but you may just find your desire for other systems decreases to the point where you may feel confident enough to let some go. The single most important thing to remember is give yourself time. Don't try to rush through everything, or you'll make yourself miserable. If you feel that you may want to consider reducing your systems, just take it slow and steady. Our minds prefer gradual curves, not sudden turns.
All that being said, I wouldn't dare to try and tell you what you should or shouldn't do. That is simply what worked for me, and I found much peace with myself. What works for you may be quite different than what worked for me.
Next, I have to take a look at liquidating my camera collection! Not looking forward to it, but again when I realized that I never touched them I knew the time has come to let them go.
Very good points all around! I'm definitely one of those collectors who probably enjoys hunting for games more than I do actually playing them (thus why flash carts are so unappealing to me), though I have always limited myself to hunting for games that I think I will genuinely enjoy playing when I get them. I've never been the "completionist" type who felt the need to own every game released for a system, I just try to track down the games that I think I would personally enjoy playing; and build diverse enough library for all my systems to give a good representation of that system's strengths and it's standout titles.
For many years that wasn't a problem at all, because I spent most of my time hunting for fairly common games for the Atari 2600, Game Boy/Color/Advance, and Genesis. The games I bought all ran me $1 to $3 each on average so it wasn't a big deal if I only played them for half an hour or so then put them in a drawer. At that price I felt like I was getting my money's worth of fun out of them, both in the hunt and the time I spent actually playing them. But times have changed and I now own all the common and inexpensive games I wanted to acquire for all my systems, and the prices for the rest of the games on my various wants lists just keep going up and up; making it unaffordable for me to keep collecting across a wide range of systems. That in turn makes me wish I could just narrow my collecting desires to one or two systems, and be happy and content enjoying not only the hunt but actually playing the games I buy.
Can I ask what it was that made you decide on the GameCube as "The One"? You seem to have had a pretty similar collecting background to me so I think I might already have a pretty good idea why you chose to stick with the system you did, but I'd still like to hear your thoughts on what makes the GameCube so special to you that you've been happy collecting for and playing games on just that one system. If you're up for sharing that is.
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Heaps of good advice, so there isn't much I can add except a personal anecdote.
Over the past year I have sold my Dreamcast, Original Xbox, PS1, Atari 2600 (ouch), Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance SP collections. Why? Because I simply did not play them. I would purchase a game, play it for a few minutes, then stick it in a box with the rest of the stuff. I realized it was the hunt and purchase that got me, not even the actual playing of the game. When I really considered it I spent most of the time in which I was able to sit down and play games using my PC for my GOG and Steam libraries, and my Gamecube. After I came to this conclusion, I decided to bite the bullet and sell off the systems I simply wasn't using. It was definitely difficult, and every time a system left my house I had moments of regret. There was also times I was tempted to buy back the systems, but I just rode it out and told myself it was for the better. Ultimately, it was actually for the better. Once the "pain" of letting the systems go faded, I realized I enjoyed my time collecting more than I had before, because I was working on collecting or playing things I really cared about. Now, when I get a Gamecube game, it feels more special and I actually dedicate some time to playing it. It hurt in the short-term to let the systems go, but now I honestly never even miss them. I also appreciated being able to use the cash to pay off some debts we had and get rid of credit cards.
I felt like a bit of a weight had been lifted, and I am much more relaxed now that I only purchase games for a couple systems. Whatever you decide, just make sure it brings you some kind of inner-peace, that's what matters in the end. It's all just stuff when all is said and done.
Thank you for sharing your story TPA5! That was a really good read and, frankly, I'd love to get to where you are some day. I do feel like my collecting and gaming experiences would be a lot more relaxed and enjoyable if I had less systems to focus on, and I know exactly what you mean when it comes to buying a game, playing it for a few minutes, then sticking it on a shelf where it will remain untouched for the next 6 months or so until I one day decide to break it out, play it for a few minutes, then put it back on the shelf to gather dust. It never feels good to spend money on things you won't actually use, but there's always that "collector compulsion" there in the back of your head insisting that you should be acquiring more stuff that you probably won't play all that often.
And you're right, it is all just stuff. None of it is anything that can't be lived without, it's all just luxury items for a bored gamer with nostalgia for "the old days" to fill their free time with. Now, if only I could come to terms with the idea of letting go of some of it. Inner-peace doesn't always come easy. #FirstWorldProblems
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Deathtrap Dungeon (PlayStation)
Boggle Plus (Game Boy)
Alleyway (Game Boy)
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Thank you to everyone of the abundance of really good ideas and collecting advice! I really wish I could take the time to reply to all of you individually, but that could take literally an entire day of typing. I will say though that I have read each and every one of your posts and given everything that all of you have had to say thorough consideration. After taking a few days consider peoples' advice here's where I'm at at this point:
The original post makes it sound like you've already chosen and don't want to admit it.
It sounds like your real issue is money spent, not space, and those are really two different things.
Perhaps, rather than sell off systems, you should just pick a few to not buy for right now.
I go through phases, and get interested in game types or systems I haven't played in a while. So I do keep things around I have fond memories of, even if I don't find them presently engrossing.
You guys (and everyone who said similar things) all hit the nail on the head. I have more than enough space to store my game libraries with plenty of room to spare, it's just an issue of deciding which systems to dedicate my limited financial resources to collecting for. And I already know which systems I play the most: Atari 2600, Game Boy / Color, and PS1. Between those three I get a really good variety of gameplay options, from the arcade style gameplay of the Atari 2600 to the "half hour adventure" style quick fix gaming of the Game Boy / Color, and the longer more engrossing games of the PS1 when I want to play something with serious depth to it.
Those are the systems that I enjoy playing—and thus collecting for—the most, but I don't think that means I should run out and sell off my Sega Genesis, NES, Game Boy Advance SP, and GameCube. I may not play those systems as much right now, but they're still systems that I play now and then for certain titles or types of gameplay that I just don't think are done as well on other systems. I tend to go through phases with my gaming habits, and there are months where almost all I'll play are some of those systems that I don't usually play as often. I love the Genesis for the early Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and Sonic titles, the NES for it's light gun shooters and classic Mario and Zelda games, the Game Boy Advance for it's abundance of classic game ports in just about every genre imaginable made portable, and the GameCube for a few select titles that just aren't on any other system (I'm looking at you, Star Fox Adventures) and it's Game Boy Player for enjoying all the Game Boy games I like to collect at home on a larger screen. In short, there's a good reason I decided to add all of these consoles to my retro gaming center, and while I may not play some as much as others, I know for a fact that I would really miss the games they had to offer if I got rid of any of them.
With that in mind, I think the best thing to do is to hold onto all of my systems and just narrow my collecting focus to say "I'm only going to collect for the Atari 2600 and Game Boy / Color until the spring". Then once the spring comes I can evaluate my game library and pick a different system or two to collect for if I feel like my interests have shifted a bit and there are other systems that I'd like to play more frequently and devote more attention to. From there I can collect for whatever two systems I choose during the spring and summer, and pick a different two when the fall comes around again. I do think I'm going to sell off some of the games for a couple of the systems that I know I'll never play, or at least can't imagine myself or my wife wanting to play at any point in the foreseeable future, but I am going to hold onto the systems themselves and all the games that I really enjoy and like to play on them. The only exception might be the Game Boy Advance SP, which I'm thinking of putting up for sale just so I can replace it with an original Game Boy Advance that's been modded with the backlit screen from an AGS-101 SP; but that's just because I'm tired of going through proprietary lithium ion battery packs for the SP and would rather have a GBA that ran off longer lasting and easy to replace rechargeable AA batteries. Other than that though, I think my systems will be staying right where they are.
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Huh, most reviewers seem to think it's pretty good and I have to admit it does look fun. I already have three of the four other horror games for the 2600 (Haunted House, Ghost Manor, and Halloween. I never picked up The Texas Chainsaw Massacre because it just doesn't look like much fun to me) and enjoy all of them a great deal, so I will be purchasing a copy of Frankenstein's Monster at some point when I stumble on a copy locally, but your criticisms have been noted. Of the horror games I have played on the 2600 I think Ghost Manor is probably my favorite. The visuals are detailed and interesting, the gameplay is fairly diverse by 2600 standards, and I dig how you can choose a male or female character using the Color/B&W switch. The only complaint I could really make about it is that the audio can be a bit grating. Still, if you're looking for a fun game to satisfy your horror cravings on the Atari 2600 I'd recommend giving Ghost Manor a try.
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For me it was the DOS game Paganitzu on the family computer, an IBM PC XT when I was 4 or 5 (around '89 or '90). I'm not sure exactly what the first home console game I played was, but it was definitely on my older brother's ColecoVision around the same time. Cosmic Avenger maybe? I definitely remember my first arcade game, a Ms. Pac-Man cocktail machine at a local bar/restaurant when I was 5 or 6, and the first handheld game I ever played was Tetris on an original gray brick Game Boy that I got for Christmas when I was 5. That also happened to be the first video game system that I could really call my own.
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Thanks for the replies and insight you guys! I'll admit that I've always had a bit of a dislike for playing games off flash carts or emulators, because half the fun (probably more than half, if I'm being honest with myself) of retro gaming for me is hunting down physical copies of the games I want to play with the best condition labels I can find and enjoying holding the cartridge or jewel case in my hand, admiring the label art, reading the paper manual, etc. I'm someone who really enjoys the visceral aspects of physical media, and I've never been able to get into flash carts or emulators because of that. I wouldn't be opposed to getting a Harmony cart for the Atari 2600 at some point so I could use it to try out new homebrew titles that haven't gotten a physical cartridge release yet, and for testing out my own Atari 2600 games if I ever take the time to learn Batari Basic like I've been thinking about doing for the last few years, but outside of the 2600 I can't see myself ever owning a flash cart for any other system.
I have already soft modded my Wii to run the Homebrew Channel and tried out several different emulators for the systems I like on it, but playing the games emulated like that instead of off the original physical media just feels… unsatisfying. I know it shouldn't make any difference if the game looks and plays the same, but it just doesn't feel "real" to me. I think I'm just really not a emulation or flash cart kinda guy. In a way I suppose that's kinda funny since I play emulated arcade games all the time on the household multicade running an iCade 60-in-1 JAMMA board (which is based off a fairly old version of MAME) and that never bothers me, but I'm guessing that's just because they're arcade games as opposed to console games and I've plunked a whole lot of quarters into restaurant arcade machines running iCade 60-in-1 boards in the past before I got my own machine.
In any case, when I brought up the situation with a non-gamer friend of mine earlier tonight he had an interesting bit of advice that I hadn't considered. He suggested that I base my decision about which systems to collect for on which systems I actually play the most (as opposed to which ones I have the most nostalgia attached to), which reminded me that for the better part of half a year now the misses and I have been participating in the What have you actually PLAYED tracker for 2015 thread here on AtariAge. So, tonight I took some time to go back through the past 5 months worth of play time submissions that I've made to that thread and see what I actually play and enjoy the most. They were all total household play time submissions, so a fair bit of the time logged (mostly on the PS1 and NES) belonged to my wife, but it definitely gave me a more clear perspective on which systems I actually use the most and which ones sit on the shelf gathering dust.
For those interested in reading it, you can see the results for my household's Top 10 Most Played Systems & Games over the last 5 months in the spoiler tag below.
Top 10 Most Played Systems
1. Atari 2600: 4,547 minutes
2. Sony PlayStation: 3,706 minutes
3. Game Boy / Color: 2,778 minutes
4. Arcade: 2,644 minutes
5. NES: 2,332 minutes
6. Sega Genesis: 1,998 minutes
7. Android: 1,967 minutes
8. Game Boy Advance: 1,148 minutes
9. GameCube: 492 minutes
10. Wii: 395 minutes
Top 10 Most Played Games
1. The Pinball Arcade (Android) - 1,967 minutes
2. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (PlayStation) - 1,096 minutes
3. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PlayStation) - 1,003 minutes
4. Harvest Moon 2 GBC (Game Boy Color) - 707 minutes
5. Metroid (NES) - 598 minutes
6. Resident Evil: Survivor (PlayStation) - 501 minutes
7. Resident Evil (GameCube) - 492 minutes
8. Kirby's Adventure (NES) - 480 minutes
9. Atari Anniversary Advance (Game Boy Advance) - 434 minutes
10. Final Doom (PlayStation) - 434 minutes
What it taught me wasn't too surprising: I spend a ton of time playing Atari 2600, Game Boy / Color, and arcade games on the household multicade; and my wife spends a pretty fair chunk of her time playing PlayStation and NES. I'm not sure those results would make me feel any better about selling off the lesser played systems and games to help fund my collecting for the systems that I do actually play a lot, but it's certainly food for thought.
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I feel like this is one of those posts that should start by me standing up at the front of the room and saying "My name is Jin and I have a problem". To cut right to the chase, the problem is that I've been collecting for way more systems than I can realistically afford to collect for; so I'm looking for advice on how to to reduce the number of systems I own and collect for without feeling like I've lost something precious in the process. I've tried a few times in the the past to whittle down the number of systems I collect for and was unsuccessful at doing so, mainly because I had some silly attachment of one kind or another to whatever system and it's corresponding game library that I was thinking about excising from my collection; so I could really use some advice from other collectors about how to moderate and focus my collecting down to just a couple systems.
For many people I imagine that collecting for several different systems wouldn't be a problem, but as someone who lives on a fixed income (and will be for the foreseeable future due to medical circumstances preventing me from working) I'm finding that there's just never enough money to go around for me to able to afford to collect for more than a couple systems. At this point I've been actively collecting for the Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis, PS1 (to a lesser extent, since the PS1 is pretty much my wife's system), GameCube, Game Boy / Color, and Game Boy Advance. I've been continually finding myself feeling really frustrated with collecting because it seems like there's always so many games and peripherals I'd like to pick up for all of those systems, and every month I'm faced with the nail bitingly difficult task of deciding which system to spend the small amount of discretionary income I have on. That frustration and indecision has really taken a lot of the enjoyment out of collecting for me, so I feel like it's time to narrow my game collecting focus a bit.
Of those systems the only one I can safely say that I'll never sell a single game or accessory for is the Atari 2600, and I wouldn't dare touch the PS1 library since at least 80% of it is my wife's, but I'd really like to find a way to whittle down the rest so I can focus my collecting efforts on the Atari 2600 and one or two other systems. Any suggestions for how choose? Every system I'm currently collecting for has played a significant role in my life at one point or another, and they all feel special to me in their own way, so I could really use some insight on how to let go of some of them without feeling bad about it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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By the way, after this week's gameplay there's a very well-known game hovering just shy of the 1000-minute club, with 999 minutes in the bank. Just one more minute will push it over the edge...
Awesome week! Those are some seriously massive play times, and the TI-99/4A continues to impress me with it's roster of new homebrews and it's big fan following. I seriously need to pick one up! On a side note, might this very well known game be an Arcade game?
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It was another "a little bit of this and a little bit of that" week around here, but this week I decided to do something a little different. I realized that I have this enormous library of 140'ish games for the Atari 2600, but for the last month or so I've been in a bit of a rut just playing the same half a dozen or so Atari 2600 games every week: Ms. Pac-Man, Millipede, Frogger, Missile Command, and a few other ports of arcade classics. With that in mind, this week I decided to pull a few stacks of Atari 2600 games that I knew were good fun games out of the game drawer and give them some well deserved play time.
Ineligible
The Pinball Arcade (Android) - 30 minutes
Arcade
Arkanoid - 65 minutes
Bomb Jack - 3 minutes
Centipede - 27 minutes
Congo Bongo - 4 minutes
Donkey Kong - 16 minutes
Donkey Kong Junior - 10 minutes
Frogger - 9 minutes
Galaga - 7 minutes
King & Balloon - 3 minutes
Lady Bug - 44 minutes
Mappy - 7 minutes
Millipede - 26 minutes
Mr. Do! - 10 minutes
Mr. Do's Castle - 30 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man - 9 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man (Speed-Up Version) - 33 minutes
Pac-Man - 20 minutes
Pooyan - 12 minutes
Scramble - 5 minutes
Space Invaders - 26 minutes
Super Breakout - 38 minutes
Super Cobra - 3 minutes
Xevious - 6 minutes
Zaxxon - 3 minutes
1942 - 25 minutes
1943 - 11 minutes
1943 Kai: Midway Kaisen - 5 minutes
Atari 2600
Atlantis - 14 minutes
Berzerk - 11 minutes
Chopper Command - 25 minutes
Commando Raid - 20 minutes
Crossbow - 23 minutes
Defender - 29 minutes
Dig Dug - 14 minutes
D.K. VCS (Demo, played on Stella for Nintendo Wii) - 3 minutes
Dodge 'Em - 9 minutes
Enduro - 36 minutes
Frogs and Flies - 25 minutes
Ghost Manor - 31 minutes
Halloween - 11 minutes
Haunted House - 31 minutes
Jungle Hunt - 72 minutes
Kangaroo - 13 minutes
Keystone Kapers - 36 minutes
Lady Bug (played on Stella for Nintendo Wii) - 58 minutes
Lead (played on Stella for Nintendo Wii) - 62 minutes
Mario Bros. - 33 minutes
Miniature Golf - 100 minutes
Q*Bert - 49 minutes
River Raid - 42 minutes
Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle - 50 minutes
Space Attack - 29 minutes
Space Invaders - 23 minutes
Sprintmaster - 25 minutes
Super Breakout - 25 minutes
Super Cobra - 58 minutes
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - 10 minutes
Venture - 11 minutes
Wizard of Wor - 30 minutes
Game Boy
Double Dragon - 23 minutes
Operation C - 47 minutes
Game Boy Color
Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 8 minutes
Total Play Time This Week
1,573 minutes (26 hours 13 minutes)
Individual System Play Times This Week
Atari 2600: 1,008 minutes
Arcade: 457 minutes
Game Boy: 70 minutes
Android: 30 minutes
Game Boy Color: 8 minutes
Just like last week, a ton of different games were played over the course of the week; but this time the misses decided to join in and take turns playing—or do two player, when the option was available—games on the 2600 along with me. Some of the standout titles ended up being Miniature Golf (which we played over breakfast every day for the last three days, and I rarely won a game
), Jungle Hunt, Defender, Lady Bug, and Lead. I put up a pretty good showing in Lady Bug and Lead, but got my all time high scores in Jungle Hunt and Defender absolutely crushed by m'lady. I really didn't mind though, since I was just happy to see her enjoying some of the games that I've always thought were really cool.We also had a blast playing the very seasonally appropriate games Halloween, Haunted House, and Ghost Manor. Of the three I think Ghost Manor is probably my favorite, but Haunted House is a total classic and my wife always gets a kick out of the music and gore effects in Halloween; plus there's definitely something to be said for it being the first video game to feature blood and decapitation. Nearly a decade before Sub-Zero was yanking off people's heads and pulling out their spines in arcades of 1992, Michael Myers was lopping off heads on the Atari 2600; and I think that's kinda cool from a historical standpoint.
The household multicade received a fair bit of playtime this week as well, with the brick breaking classics Super Breakout and Arkanoid receiving a substantial play by both members of the household, and the trackball getting more than a few good spins via Centipede and Millipede. While I continue practicing and honing my skills in Ms. Pac-Man, Lady Bug, and 1942, the misses found herself getting hooked on Mr. Do's Castle and making it a new addition to her usual rotation Donkey Kong, Frogger, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man. The only other notable events for the week were that after nearly 22 years of practice I finally managed to 1 credit clear Operation C for the Game Boy ( http://i.imgur.com/bXZGDf7.jpg & http://i.imgur.com/0oxreDO.jpg ) and, with a little practice and a few continues, was able to beat Super Cobra on the Atari 2600 too. I've played the arcade version of Super Cobra a few times on the multicade and couldn't really get into it due to the extremely high difficulty level, but I really enjoy the more reasonable pacing of the Atari 2600 version and was happy to have been able to beat it. The time I spent playing Super Cobra also got my gaming palette thoroughly whetted for the upcoming homebrew release of the Atari 2600 port of Scramble. That is definitely going to be a "buy the day of release" title for me, so I'll be sure to keep my eyes open for any development updates on Scramble.
Musings on the history of violence in video games and Scramble ramblings concluded, I think that about covers everything for this week!
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Venture (Atari 2600)
Arkanoid (Arcade)
Lady Bug (Arcade)
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Glenn's Miniature Golf+ was a great hack. I bought a copy back in '03 or so when he created it.
After going on a Miniature Golf bender the last few days I'm now convinced that I have to buy the + hack at some point very soon. I'm curious though, how many holes are in it? Is it a 9 hole course like the original or was it expanded to a full 18?
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Awesome pictures and video! It was really neat finally getting to take a good look at the labels and box art for all the new homebrew releases and see them being played, and that Tod Frye video was just kind of awe inspiring.
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I've gotta go with the original. As fondly as I remember the dozens upon dozens of hours I've logged in Symphony of the Night over the years, the original is still the one I go back and play through whenever I need a Castlevania fix. It's an iconic classic with great level design, excellent music, and just really solid and challenging (yet rarely frustrating, for me at least) gameplay. Best of all it's I game that I can sit down, play through, and beat in half an hour or less. I love shorter action/adventure platformer games in general, and the original Castlevania for the NES—and it's Classic NES Series port for the Game Boy Advance—stands alongside Super Mario Land and Kirby's Dream Land on the Game Boy as one of my all time favorites.
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Would love to get hold of a Starplex controller. What sort of price do they fetch?
I'm in the same boat. My wife is a big Asteroids fan and I'd love to get her a Starplex controller, but it seems like they're nearly impossible to find on eBay anymore. From what I gather there was a big crate of new in box Starplex controllers discovered around a decade ago, so the market was temporarily flooded with them, but now the stock has dried up and I can't seem to find any these days. I'd of course also want to get a Space Rocks overlay for it if I could find one, but those seem to be just as non-existent now.
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I already mentioned the original production Atari 2600 games that I thought were the hardest, with Jr. Pac-Man leading the pack in that category, but there's one homebrew game that I just have to mention if I'm going to be talking about the hardest games on the system: Lead. This 2008 homebrew title doesn't appear too difficult when you watch gameplay videos of it, but once you try playing it you quickly realize that some very bizarre design choices make this game just mercilessly hard in the most literal sense of the word "merciless".
What I mean by this is that in most vertical or horizontal scrolling spaceship shooters (A.K.A. "shmups") you're given around three or so lives, have the opportunity to earn more if you rack up a certain amount of points, and there's no punishment for letting an enemy pass by you without shooting them. In Lead however you are given one and only one life, no chance to earn extra lives, and if you let an enemy pass by your ship without shooting them or run into any enemies or hazards you immediately lose the game. What the actual @!#[email protected]!? Even the most brutally difficult games like Jr. Pac-Man give you at least a few lives, so it's not an instant game over if you make a mistake, but that's not the case in Lead. If you make one mistake at any point in the game that's it, no mercy. Game over, you're done. There have been a few quality shmup titles on other platforms over the years that were able to get away with only giving you one life, such as 1943 and 1943 Kai: Midway Kaisen, but that was only because they gave you a health bar so you didn't instantly lose the game if you took a hit; which isn't something you have in Lead. And don't even get me started on the Scramble stages, which rapidly crank up the difficulty from "challenging" to "I want to smash the controller".
To Lead's credit the game does give you infinite continues, but whenever you continue it resets your score to zero so there's not much point in continuing unless you just want to practice the stage you died on for your next play through attempt. It's a beautiful looking game with smooth controls and enjoyable gameplay (aside from those godforsaken Scramble stages), and some of the best music on the Atari 2600; but some really strange design choices (only giving you 1 life, no opportunity to earn extras, and instantly losing if you fail to shoot any enemies) make it pretty much unplayably difficult for all but the most hardcore shmup fans. If I had to pick the absolute hardest game on the 2600, counting both original releases and homebrews, Lead would be it.
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Might let mine go (brand new in the box)... what are they worth now?
eBay prices seem to be around $20 + shipping for new in box ones, though I'm hoping someone here might be willing to cut me a little better deal. If you're interested in selling yours then feel free to PM me about it and let me know what you'd like to get for it. Fortunately shipping shouldn't be too expensive if you did decide to sell, since you live just the next state over from me. If there's anything you're looking for trade wise that I might have available (Genesis, SNES, PS1, GameCube, and Game Boy/Color/Advance games and accessories mainly) I'd be happy to work out a trade as well.
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Hey there everyone
Just wondering if anyone around the forum has any NOS (with or without box) QuickJoy Foot Pedal controllers laying around that they'd be willing to part with for a reasonable price? I checked around online a few places and found some on eBay, but unfortunately the eBay seller was located in Greece so the shipping cost would have been astronomical. Any chance one of you stateside folks has one of these that you could spare?
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It only took me 22 years of practice, but I finally 1CC'd Operation C for the Game Boy this afternoon! This has been a long time coming.
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One of the things that I like the most about the Atari 2600 is that the difficulty level of almost every game is very reasonable on the standard default settings, but there are still a few that are just brutally hard. Of the couple that come to mind, I'm going to have to go with Jr. Pac-Man for the award of Hardest Game On The Atari 2600. I've spent hours and hours playing this game and only beat the first level and small handful times. Gravitar, Dodge 'Em, and Kaboom! get pretty ridiculous pretty fast too, but I don't think there's any other game I know of on the Atari 2600 that will just mercilessly kick your ass right out of the gate quite like Jr. Pac-Man.
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For some reason I've just been hooked on Sprintmaster lately. The controls are really difficult to master, but it does feel like the Atari 2600 equivalent of Mario Kart and is tons of fun to play (especially multiplayer) once you get the hang of it.
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This is just the weirdest thing to me. I never heard my parents or any of my friends' parents growing up ever mention anything about video game systems being harmful to a television, but this was in the late 80's and early 90's so perhaps this particular rumor ran it's course before my time. I'd be really curious to know what started it though, since it seems to be fairly widespread and I had never even heard of it until today. Snopes.com and a few Google searches turned up nothing, so if anyone knows about the origin of this myth I'd be really interested in hearing about it.
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I just want to know why there wasn't a cool looking NES styled handheld to commemorate the occasion! For the NES and Famicom's 20th anniversary, Nintendo fans got these:
What did we get this time around? A home console Mario game that requires fans to make levels for it because Nintendo didn't feel like making a new Mario game themselves? I was kinda hoping for something a little more… I don't know, commemorative.
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With the weather starting to get colder and not much in the way of real life obligations to attend to, this week brought with it not only the first frost but also our household's biggest week for gaming since we started participating in the tracker!
Inteligible
Tetris Worlds (Game Boy Advance) - 29 minutes
Arcade
Arkanoid - 82 minutes
Centipede - 21 minutes
Dig Dug - 15 minutes
Dig Dug (played on Namco Museum for Game Boy Advance) - 12 minutes
Donkey Kong - 27 minutes
Donkey Kong Junior - 9 minutes
Frogger - 33 minutes
Galaga - 10 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man - 84 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man (played on Namco Museum for Game Boy Advance) - 42 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man (Speed-Up Version) - 7 minutes
Pac-Man - 40 minutes
Scramble - 6 minutes
Space Invaders - 25 minutes
Space Panic - 2 minutes
Super Breakout - 224 minutes
The End - 5 minutes
Xevious - 20 minutes
1942 - 58 minutes
Atari 2600
Asteroids - 46 minutes
Breakout - 14 minutes
Brik (played on Stella for Nintendo Wii) - 5 minutes
Frogger - 22 minutes
Joust - 40 minutes
Kung-Fu Master - 27 minutes
Lady Bug (played on Stella for Nintendo Wii) - 16 minutes
Millipede - 49 minutes
Mouse Trap - 37 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man - 36 minutes
Pac-Man - 10 minutes
River Raid - 14 minutes
Super Breakout - 86 minutes
Titan Axe (played on Stella for Nintendo Wii) - 12 minutes
Game Boy
Double Dragon - 34 minutes
Operation C - 42 minutes
Pipe Dream - 15 minutes
Space Invaders - 12 minutes
Super Mario Land - 81 minutes
Game Boy Color
Frogger - 22 minutes
Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition - 21 minutes
1942 - 71 minutes
NES
Double Dribble - 69 minutes
Duck Hunt - 28 minutes
Freedom Force - 46 minutes
Hogan's Alley - 33 minutes
Mechanized Attack - 39 minutes
Metroid - 296 minutes
Operation Wolf - 24 minutes
Pinball Quest - 26 minutes
Super Mario Bros. - 58 minutes
Xevious (played on Classic NES Series: Xevious for Game Boy Advance) - 21 minutes
Total Play Time This Week
2,103 minutes (35 hours 3 minutes)
Individual System Play Times This Week
Arcade: 722 minutes
NES: 640 minutes
Atari 2600: 414 minutes
Game Boy: 184 minutes
Game Boy Color: 114 minutes
Game Boy Advance: 29 minutes
Whew! What a week! As you can see from the enormous list of games above, the bulk of this household's playtime was a few minutes here and a few minutes there spread a across a large variety of games on our multicade and several different 8-bit systems; but there were some big standouts that ended up consuming a lot more of our gaming time than the rest. Brick breaking games were a big hit around here this past week, with the misses and I both logging some pretty substantial chunks of time in the arcade versions of Super Breakout and Arkanoid as well as the Atari 2600 port of Super Breakout. We ended up having a little high score competition in the arcade version of Super Breakout, taking turns playing each game mode and seeing who could get the highest score, and while my wife still holds the top scores in the Progressive and Cavity modes (with scores of 363 and 575 respectively) I did manage to snag the top spot in Double mode with a score of 607. We both had so much with it that we're currently looking into adding a Ultimarc SpinTrak spinner to the newly revised control panel of our multicade that should be here in a few weeks, to use in place of the trackball (which still works surprisingly well) for Super Breakout and Arkanoid.
Other big games of the week were the arcade version of Ms. Pac-Man, which I played about as much as usual, and Metroid on the NES which my wife is continuing to play through. I did take some free time earlier this weekend to do play throughs of all my favorite NES Zapper games as well, and ended up actually beating Mechanized Attack and Freedom Force in the process! I still need to beat Operation Wolf at some point, but it might be a while until my trigger finger is up to that task.
In other shooting news, I've been really enjoying my recently acquired copy of 1942 for the Game Boy Color. The household multicade got me hooked on the arcade version of 1942 so I decided to pick up a handheld version to play on the go, and I've been really pleased with the accuracy of the GBC port (aside from the slightly grating music). The somewhat reduced difficulty level has allowed me to get through about 2/3 of the 32 levels so far, and the password save system has made it really nice for playing in short bursts here and there. I'm sure that with a little practice I'll be able to beat it before too long, but I'm just having fun playing it so I'm in no rush on that. Anyway, that's all the gaming news that's fit to print for this week!
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Why Do We Simulate When We Can Emulate?
in Arcade and Pinball
Posted
To answer the OP's question, it's pretty simple: Running MAME requires a great deal of setup, tinkering, and technical knowledge. Sticking a disc or cartridge in a console and pressing the Power button does not. Simplicity and ease of use often trumps authenticity for many people.