Skippy B. Coyote

Hey there everyone! After taking a few weeks to evaluate my gaming hobby and where I want to put my collecting focus in the future I've decided that it's time to liquidate my Atari 2600 collection to bring in a little cash and help me focus my collecting efforts over the next year on the systems I really love the most: Nintendo handhelds and the GameCube. I will be a little sad to see all this Atari stuff that I've spent so much time and money collecting go, but honestly I just don't really play them anymore and I'd rather they go to good homes that will use and appreciate them more. This is only my third sales thread here on AtariAge, so to give you a reference for my reliability as a seller, you can see all the feedback I've received from selling games and related accessories on eBay over the last half a dozen or so years here: http://www.ebay.com/usr/hanz0d0g Before we get down to business, here's the usual info: All prices listed below are firm and do not include shipping costs. Shipping costs to anywhere in the United States will be calculated by based on zip code and package size/weight. I do offer free shipping on all purchases over $50! All items will be shipped via USPS and delivery confirmation will be included so that you can track the package. International shipping is available upon request and will be calculated based on location. Payment is accepted via PayPal only, and all sales are on a "first come first serve" basis. In other words, the first person to PM me about an item gets it! There are a number of things I am willing to accept in trade for the items I have for sale, and as far as trades go here's what I am currently in the market for: Items I Am Accepting In Trade Nintendo DS Lite system (Crimson & Black Color) *Must be either New In Box or in Like New condition with zero scratches anywhere on the system* Nintendo DSi XL system (Bronze Color) *Must be either New In Box or in Like New condition with zero scratches anywhere on the system* Various Complete In Box Nintendo DS Games (See spoiler tag below for the full list) That's it for trades I'm willing to accept, so now on to the stuff I've got for sale/trade! Atari 2600 Homebrew Games Princess Rescue (Brand new & still sealed, includes manual) - $249 Atari 2600 Complete In Box Games All games are fully tested, guaranteed to work just fine, and have good condition labels with no rips or tears unless otherwise noted. Dark Chambers - $12 Secret Quest - $12 Solaris - $7 Atari 2600 Games With Manuals All games are fully tested, guaranteed to work just fine, and have good condition labels with no rips or tears unless otherwise noted. Air Sea Battle - $3 Asteroids - $2 Bowling - $3 Combat - $1 Donkey Kong (Coleco version) - $5 Frogger - $4 Haunted House - SOLD Joust - SOLD Jungle Hunt - SOLD Miniature Golf - $4 Missile Command - $2 Mouse Trap (Coleco version) - SOLD Ms. Pac-Man - $4 Pac-Man - FREE! No one should have to pay money to play this game. Q*Bert - SOLD Reactor - $2 Riddle of the Sphinx (The manual is missing 2 pages) - SOLD Space Attack - $2 Starmaster - $2 Star Raiders w/ Video Touchpad - $10 Star Voyager - $3 Super Cobra - $5 Warlords - $3 Wizard of Wor - $6 Loose Atari 2600 Games All games are fully tested, guaranteed to work just fine, and have good condition labels with no rips or tears unless otherwise noted. Adventure - $5 Armor Ambush - SOLD Astroblast - $2 Atlantis - SOLD Barnstorming - $3 Basketball - $3 Battlezone - $4 Berzerk - $3 Breakout - $3 BurgerTime - SOLD California Games - $4 Carnival - $3 Centipede (2 copies available) - $4 each Chopper Command - $3 Circus Atari - $3 Coconuts - $4 Commando Raid - SOLD Cosmic Ark - SOLD Crossbow - $5 Crystal Castles - SOLD Dark Cavern - $3 Defender - $3 Demon Attack - $2 Demons to Diamonds - $2 Desert Falcon - $8 Dig Dug - $5 Dodge 'Em - $2 Donkey Kong Junior (Coleco version) - $4 Dragonfire - $4 Dragster (Small tear on the top of the label) - $2 Enduro - $3 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial - SOLD Fishing Derby - $4 Freeway - $2 Frogger II: Threeedeep! - SOLD Frogs and Flies - $3 Galaxian - $5 Gangster Alley - $4 G.I. Joe: Cobra Strike - $5 Ghost Manor / Artillery Duel Double Ender (Crooked and winkled label) - SOLD Golf - SOLD Gorf - $3 Grand Prix - $2 Gravitar - $5 H.E.R.O. - SOLD Iced Hockey - $3 Jr. Pac-Man - $5 Kaboom! - SOLD Kangaroo - $3 Keystone Kapers - SOLD Kung-Fu Master - SOLD Kung Fu Superkicks (Missing one latch key inside cart. The game still plays fine.) - SOLD Lock 'N' Chase - $3 Mario Bros. - SOLD Maze Craze - $2 Megamania - $4 Midnight Magic - $3 Millipede - $7 Moon Patrol - $3 Night Driver - $2 Othello - $5 Outlaw - $3 Phoenix - $3 Pitfall! (Small tear in the front label) - $4 Pitfall II: Lost Caverns - SOLD Pole Position - $4 Popeye - $4 Raiders of the Lost Ark - SOLD Realsports Boxing - $4 River Raid - SOLD Robot Tank - $3 Sentinel - SOLD Skate Boardin' - $3 Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle - $7 Skiing - SOLD Space Invaders - $2 Space Jockey - $2 Spider Fighter - $2 Spider-Man - SOLD Sprintmaster - $4 Stampede - SOLD Stargate - $10 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - $7 Super Breakout - $2 Superman - $3 Surround - SOLD Tennis - $3 Trick Shot - $2 Turmoil - $6 Vanguard (Small hole in front label) - $2 Venture (Coleco version) - SOLD Video Olympics - $2 Video Pinball - SOLD Winter Games - $3 Yars' Revenge - SOLD That's everything! Thank you for taking the time to view my sales thread and you are interested in buying or trading for any items just shoot me a PM about it! Additional pictures of any items are always available upon request.

For me there's no question whatsoever, it was this: Ever since I was a little kid I've loved arcade games, and some of my fondest childhood gaming memories are of playing a Ms. Pac-Man cocktail cabinet at a local bar every Saturday night with a fistfull of quarters that my dad gave me to play with. I'd spend hours feeding that machine, and any other arcade machine I could find, quarter after quarter each week. And when I went home at the end of the night I'd spend just as much time playing ports of arcade games on my older brother's ColecoVision with an Atari 2600 expansion module. Centipede was my favorite game, and though I never saw a machine of it locally I always wished I could play the real arcade version somemday. When my wife and I's two year wedding anniversary came around last September and she asked me if there was anything really special that I'd like for it I knew right away what I wanted, but I didn't think we could really afford it since we're both on fixed incomes. My "dream machine" was a bartop sized recreation of a Centipede arcade cabinet, with a vertical LCD monitor, iCade 60-in-1 board installed, backlit marquee, authentic looking bezel art, and joystick + trackball controls. What followed was several months of us shopping around online, contacting various websites that specialized in making scratch-built bartop arcade machines. We must have contacted nearly a dozen different sites, and all of them quoted us prices of anywhere from $800 to $1,200 before shipping costs; which was way out of our price range. All but one that is. When I contacted http://doxcade.com and told them what I was looking for, the price I was quoted was an astonishingly affordable $440 + $35 shipping to Minnesota. That was much more in line with our budget! $800+ was out of the question, but with a little careful budgeting (and a few eBay sales of items from our tabletop gaming library) we were able to get the $475 together and pay for the commission within a few weeks of getting the price quote. Approximately one month later the machine showed up on our doorstep, and it was just fantastic! Literally everything I've ever wanted and dreamed about in an arcade machine, and ever since it arrived my wife and I have both spent hours every week playing classic arcade games together. There's no question what my favorite gaming purchase as an adult has been, my custom Centipede multicade wins hands down!

I've never had a problem with Shanghai Pocket on the Game Boy Color honestly. If I try playing it on a Game Boy Advance SP the screen size does get a touch too small for my eyes, but on the GBC (especially with the addition of a Worm Light) I can see all the different tiles just fine. It's actually my second favorite Shanghai game, with my favorite being the one built into Clubhouse Games for the Nintendo DS. Shanghai is one game that really benefits from touchscreen controls, and I really like the variety and difficulty curves of the stages in Clubhouse Games. When I was short on cash and sold off my DS Lite and game library earlier this year, Clubhouse Games was the one game I kept for when I eventually get a new DS/3DS system.

Gee, these weekly game pics of mine are starting to look awfully similar the last few weeks! Arcade Arkanoid - 11 minutes Centipede - 20 minutes Donkey Kong - 13 minutes Frogger - 6 minutes Millipede - 12 minutes Ms. Pac-Man - 6 minutes Pac-Man - 9 minutes Space Invaders - 8 minutes Super Breakout - 25 minutes Game Boy Color Monopoly - 317 minutes Shanghai Pocket - 163 minutes MS-DOS Wolfenstein 3D - 123 minutes PlayStation Tenchu: Stealth Assassins - 367 minutes Tomb Raider II - 242 minutes Total Play Time This Week 1,563 minutes (26 hours 3 minutes) Individual System Play Times This Week PlayStation: 850 minutes Game Boy Color: 480 minutes MS-DOS: 123 minutes Arcade: 110 minutes Before I get into the details of this week, I should clarify that I listed the Game Boy Advance port of Wolfenstein 3D under "MS-DOS" because it is the only console port of the game to ever be a 100% perfect port of the original DOS version with zero changes of any kind made to the game. All the pictures of Hitler, Nazi insignias, guard dogs, blood, and all that jazz that was removed from other console ports are present and accounted for. The only difference between the Game Boy Advance port and the DOS original are the controls, which is just using a D-pad and buttons instead of a keyboard. As far as the rest of my household's gaming time this week goes, it wasn't all that different from the last. I did manage to finally finish up Tomb Raider II this week (after logging just over 27 hours of playtime in it) and now I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of Tomb Raider III once funds allow. I think I'm probably going to end up playing through every Tomb Raider game on the PS1 within the next year. I also spent a fair bit of time in Monopoly and Shanghai Pocket on the Game Boy Color, and while I've now beaten Monopoly on the hardest possible game settings several times over I've still yet to get past the 5th stage in Shanghai Pocket, and there are 12 in all. I doubt I'll ever beat them all in one sitting, but I am having fun going through and trying to beat them all (with the "unlimited time" setting on) separately. For now though my big focus is going to be playing through and beating every chapter in the iconic and groundbreaking first person shooter that is Wolfenstein 3D. For my wife's gaming time this week she mostly just stuck to playing arcade games on the multicade a few minutes here and a few minutes there, and at one point topped her all time high score in Pac-Man in the process. Not being sure what console game she wants to play next, she decided to just go back and start playing through Tenchu: Stealth Assassins for a second time; using the male ninja this time around. She's already achieved a Grand Master rating on several levels, so I don't think it'll take her too long to get through it on this play through. That's all for this week! P.S.: Sweet mother of Stella there is a lot of Christmas Carol for the Intellivision playtime going on this week! It must seriously be one heck of a game!

Out of curiosity I've been researching Nintendo DS and 3DS games lately, and as a little hobby project I'm attempting to compile a list of all the DS and 3DS games worth playing that can be controlled using nothing more than the touchscreen and stylus. The idea behind this project is to make a list of accessible games for people with disabilities who might have trouble holding the system in their hands and using the D-pad and buttons, but can still set the system on a table or in their lap and operate a stylus. I've got a pretty good list of original DS games going so far, but I've yet to find any 3DS games that use a "touchscreen only" control setup. So, if you guys and gals have any recommendations to add to the list I'd love to hear them! Here's what I've got so far: DS Advance Wars: Dual Strike Clubhouse Games Elite Beat Agents Hotel Dusk: Room 215 Kirby: Canvas Curse Kirby: Mass Attack The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Meteos Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Professor Layton and the Curious Village Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords Trauma Center: Under the Knife 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors 3DS ???

You certainly could be right about DS prices, since some of the cult favorite games on the system like The Dark Spire and Solatorobo: Red the Hunter just keep going up and up and I don't think those will be going down any time in the foreseeable future. But, I do still anticipate that most of the more common and widely known original DS games, especially first party titles like Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros., will fall in price a bit when Nintendo eventually drops backwards compatibility with original DS games on their current gen handhelds. Who knows though, the DS does have what is probably the largest and most diverse library of quality games of any handheld ever produced; so it wouldn't surprise me if it bucked the usual market trend and saw a steady increase in prices even after support for the games gets dropped on current gen hardware. As long as we're on the subject of game prices though, I have to say that I am really glad that my favorite systems both to play and collect for, the original Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, don't seem to have gotten hit by the recent collector's market madness like most of Nintendo's other systems have. I'm not sure why exactly, but while NES and SNES prices have skyrocketed their handheld counterparts have stayed very affordable and easy to collect for. The only Game Boy/Color/Advance games that I can think of that have really gone nuts price wise over the last few years have been Shantae for the GBC and Invader for the GBA, and I'm still kicking myself for not picking up Shantae when I had the chance to buy a copy CIB for $100 three years ago. I just found out about the shmup awesomeness that is the European exclusive Invader for the GBA earlier this year though, so I'm not beating myself up too much for not getting a copy when it wasn't $100+. Those two games aside, I'm thankful that my favorite systems are still really affordable to collect for.

I've definitely noticed it too over the last few years, especially when it comes to Nintendo brand home consoles. First it was SNES games that shot up in price, then NES, GameCube, and now N64. If I had to speculate at what is going on here I think it's kind of like a feedback loop in the retro game collecting world. What I mean by this is that when retro game collectors hear that prices are starting to go up on games or systems they don't own yet and would like to own at some point, they start prioritizing adding a copy of that game or system to their collection. Since they've heard prices are going up they become willing pay a little more for it than they normally would, and every time someone buys the game or system at a higher than usual price it creates a new higher market value for that game or system. Ironically it seems that collectors who fear rising prices are themselves the ones making the prices rise. That all said, I'm just as guilty of contributing to this as anyone. One of the systems I've always enjoyed playing the most is the GameCube, and knowing that GameCube prices are sharply on the rise (which may be due to collectors fearing that it might be Nintendo's last "traditional" console in addition to the feedback loop theory) I have every intention of buying as many of the GameCube games that I'd like in my library as I can afford to acquire in 2016. The Nintendo DS is another one that I'd like to start collecting for, but where prices go from here may depend largely on whether or not Nintendo's next handheld supports backwards compatibility with original DS games. If it does then I think we can expect to see DS game prices continuing to rise as the majority of gamers who prefer to use current gen hardware seek out copies of DS games to play, but if backwards compatibility with DS games is dropped on Nintendo's next handheld then DS game prices should drop off for a year or two before rising once again when it becomes a "retro" system sought after by collectors. This seems to happen every time a current gen system drops backwards compatibility with an older generation. Game prices on the older generation games drop sharply as retailers try to liquidate their stock, since the majority of gamers want to use current gen hardware and no longer desire the older games that they can't play on their current system. Eventually, a year or two after all the big retailer liqidations, a collectors market begins form around the older system and prices slowly start rising again. It's the natural ebb and flow of the gaming industry, so if you're looking to pick up original DS games on the cheap I'd recommend waiting until Nintendo rolls out a handheld that drops backwards compatibility with the original DS. At that point prices should fall to their lowest.

Wow, I used to have that exact same casing on my old PS2! As Reaperman mentioned it is an aftermarket top case, but to give you a little more info the company that made them was called Swap Magic. The cases came with a Swap Magic boot disc that you'd use to start up the system, then once it was running you could open up the top, remove the disc, and swap in any import game you wanted to play. It was an easy and convenient way to play imports without having to solder in a mod chip.

I snapped a picture of this one at a local game store.

55. Tomb Raider II (Sony PlayStation) This might be my last one for 2015, but oh man was it ever a good one! It's been probably 15 years since I last played though this game, and I had an absolute blast revisiting it. I think the levels in Tibet may be my all time favorite levels in any Tomb Raider game ever made, and getting to play through them again for the first time in the better part of two decades was an absolute joy. It took me just over 27 hours to play through the whole game beginning to end and I can safely say that if was worth every minute of it!

Thanks for the thoughtful reply hookem! To clarify my situation I have opened up and cleaned every Atari 2600 system I've owned. I said I'm not the most technically inclined person in the world because I don't solder and I am definitely far from an electrician, but I do understand the basic components that make up the Atari 2600 and I'm fairly used to opening up and cleaning most of the systems I own from time to time. A little compressed air to blow out dust and some rubbing alcohol on q-tips for the contacts always does the trick. As far as figuring out what caused the failures, that was done by people with more intimate knowledge of the 2600's inner workings than myself. Here's a few threads I started about three of the problematic systems I've had for examples: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/239256-vader-showing-dark-vertical-lines-in-certain-games/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/241061-atari-2600-picture-cutting-out-after-a-few-minutes-of-gameplay/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/243137-rf-box-on-2600-constantly-going-out-of-tune-any-fix/ Unfortunately I don't own any of the systems I've had trouble with anymore (aside from my current one, which appears to have a modulator issue) since I don't have the storage space to keep broken systems and I just find it kind of irritating to see something I paid money for sitting around in a non-working state. So every time an Atari 2600 started malfunctioning on me I either sold it for parts or returned it to the seller for a refund. I'm still not sure exactly what I'm going to do the for the future, but (as much as you guys and gals probably don't want to hear this) I'm really leaning towards just putting all my 2600 games and peripherals up for sale in the Marketplace and putting the money from the sales into my Game Boy/Color/Advance collections. Those are the systems I love playing and collecting for the most, and ever since my wife and I got a Centipede multicade arcade machine with a 60-in-1 board in it this fall my desire to play the 2600 has dropped to almost zero. Being able to play almost all the 2600 games I like the most in their original arcade forms with better graphics and sound on the multicade made the 2600 ports seem much less appealing to me, and I haven't felt the desire to play any of them for a few months now. I'm not going to make any snap decisions on the subject, but between all the reliability issues I've had with my 2600s and the fact that I can now play the arcade versions of most of the 2600 games I like the best I'm not sure I really want to spend any more money on yet another new 2600 system. And I know that I sure as heck could use the money that selling off my 2600 collection would bring in. Anyway, I'm probably rambling now so I'll wrap this up by just saying thank you again to everyone who has replied to this thread and offered their experiences and insights.

You're starting to win me over on the emulation subject. I know we've debated about this in other threads before and I've always been really opposed to the idea, but I am beginning to see where you're coming from.

Hey now, if I was being any less than completely honest about my experiences with my Atari 2600 consoles I wouldn't have had any reason to make this thread in the first place. If you look through my post history on this forum you'll find threads chronicling all the problems I've had with 3 or 4 out of the 5 systems over the last year. If I was trying to troll you with false claims about my experiences then this last year has been one pretty darn long running prank. All my Atari 2600s were purchased in like-new/near-mint condition and not abused in any way. Their power supplies were all hooked up to a ridiculously expensive Monster brand surge protector, I never used any peripherals with them that could have damaged them, and I treated them with the same gentle care that I've given to all of my other classic gaming consoles. I'm really glad that you and so many others have experienced good reliability from your Atari 2600 systems, but for me they have been the most horrendously unreliable consoles I've ever used. Like, worse than the Xbox 360 and ColecoVision combined, which is saying a lot. I do appreciate the suggestion about a cart modded Flashback 2, and I do actually own a Flashback 2 that I could potentially pay someone to mod for me (since I lack both the tools and skills to do it myself) but the long list of games that the FB2 is incompatible with kinda kills that idea for me. Again though, thank you for the suggestion and thank you to everyone who has provided their feedback in this thread. It does seem like I've just been horribly unlucky, so now I just have to decide if I want to spend any more money pushing my luck or if it's time to call it quits and focus on the other systems in my collection.

All of the above, that you just mentioned. Same TV, same power outlet, etc. The thing is I have three other consoles hooked up to the same setup (an original toaster NES, a model 2 Sega Genesis, and a Sony PlayStation) and none of them have ever had any problems. This leads me to believe that the ways that all my different Atari 2600 systems failed in (dead capacitors, TIA chips, modulators, etc.) were due to the system itself and not any external source.

It sure could be just horrible luck, but I'm also wondering if I just put my systems through a lot more use than most Atari 2600 owners. During the times that I have had a working system I put 10 to 20 hours a week of play time on it every week, and I'm wondering if the components old systems just aren't built to hold up to that kind of constant use now that they're 30+ years old. Based on my experiences I could easily see people having 6 or 7 different Atari 2600 systems that all worked perfectly if they only played them a few minutes here and a few minutes there, but I wonder how they would hold up if they all got played 50 to 100 hours a month. Mine all worked great for the first month or two, and they were all perfectly clean like-new systems, but once I began racking up triple digit play times on them they failed. Do you think the amount of use I put my systems through could have anything to do with it?

After reading all the responses so far, all I can think is: I do seem to be cursed when it comes to 2600 hardware, but Schizo's suggestion does seem like a good one. I've contemplated getting a refurbished system from Best Electronics before, but the astronomically high price always kept me from pulling the trigger on one. If I do get another 2600 that really is the route I should take, I just have to figure out if it will be worth that much money to me to be able to continue playing Atari 2600 games.

Hey there everyone, I'm asking this question because I've come to a bit of a crossroads in my retro gaming hobby, and to make up my mind about what to do I think I could use some input from others who collect for and enjoy playing the Atari 2600. My problem is this: I've been into retro gaming for about a decade now, and of all my retro gaming systems the only ones that have ever given me serious trouble have been my Atari 2600s. My other systems are all going on 5 to 10 years of constant use without a hitch (aside from having to replace the 72 pin connector in my NES once), but over the last year I have been through a total of 5 different Atari 2600 systems because they just keep breaking down on me. Two Vaders, two four switch woodies, and one Sears Video Arcade II to be exact. I'll buy an Atari 2600 off eBay that has been fully tested and guaranteed to work, and it will work... for about 1 to 2 months that is. Either the modulator fails, the TIA chip dies, capacitors go out, or something else goes wrong with it within a couple months of purchase. Not being a technically inclined person, this has meant selling my broken system and buying a new one every time something has gone wrong. At first I thought I was just having bad luck, but when it happened again with the literally brand new Vader system I bought a couple months ago I'm starting to wonder if Atari 2600s are just inherently unreliable and if I would be better off selling my entire Atari 2600 collection and focusing my time and money on other systems. I do enjoy playing the 140'ish games in my Atari 2600 library a lot, and I especially look forward to the new homebrew releases that AtariAge puts out a few times a year, but I have come to the point where I don't want to have to buy yet another Atari 2600 system again if I replace my current broken unit and the next one I get breaks down too. I'm just tired of it. So, what I'm wondering is what the experiences of this community as a whole have been with the reliability of Atari 2600 systems? Have you experienced the kind of regular system failures that I have? Or do you have an Atari 2600 that has received regular use and lasted a decade or more without any problems? I think learning about other people's experiences with this system will help me decide whether I want to give it one more try, or just call it quits on the Atari and stick to other systems that won't require regular repair or replacement.

I've got a few things planned for the coming year, with three in particular on my mind. #1. Decide what to do about my Atari 2600 collection This is the biggest thing on my mind right now. I've currently got a library of around 140'ish games for the 2600 (some being pretty valuable ones to boot) and I do enjoy playing them, but I've been through four different Atari 2600 systems in the last year and I've yet to find one that works right for more than a month or two before it breaks down. I like the games on the system, but I'm really sick of the unreliable system hardware. In 2016 I need to either find a system to play my 2600 games on that works reliably and will keep working over the long term or just say "screw it" and sell my entire Atari 2600 collection. Either way I need to decide soon, since I'm tired of my Atari games just sitting around collecting dust and I don't want to have to keep buying or new systems or getting the one I have repaired every few months. #2. Get a GameCube w/ Game Boy Player again My last one broke down and got sold off for parts last summer, and I really miss the system. I was short on cash at the time so I ended up selling all my GameCube games along with it, so my second biggest collecting priority in 2016 is going to be to get a new GameCube with a Game Boy Player and start rebuilding my GameCube collection. #3. Get a backlit Game Boy & a frontlit Game Boy Color My favorite systems by far to collect for and play games on are the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, and while I do love playing the games on stock original hardware I've been really itching to enhance my gaming experiences by picking up an original Game Boy with an olive green colored backlight and a biversion chip from http://www.gameboymods.co.uk and a grape colored Game Boy Color with the front light from an AGS-001 GBA SP installed in it by http://www.8bitaesthetics.bigcartel.com Both of those sites do fantastic work and I know they're not going to be around and producing these modded systems forever, so in 2016 I really want to add a backlit Game Boy and a frontlit Game Boy Color to my collection while I still can.

Awesome! The PS1 was definitely my most played system in the later parts of my childhood and most of my teenage years, with the Game Boy Color coming in a close second. In a way it's kinda funny since those are the systems I still enjoy playing the most today lol The PS1 works really well for my wife too, since due to some physical limitations she can't hold a regular game controller and needs to use an arcade stick for all the games she plays. That makes later systems that use dual analog sticks a big "NO-GO" for her, but the single D-Pad/Stick control of the PS1 works great and I think she's come to love the system even more than I do. Strangely I don't think I've ever played the original Tenchu, since my first (and I'm pretty sure only) experience with the series was Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven on the PS2. After watching the misses play the original I really should give it a go at some point though, and pick up the sequal for the PS1 while I'm at it.

Gaming this week was fairly similar to the last around here, but with a bit less time logged due to a houseguest coming to visit. Ineligible The Pinball Arcade (Android) - 32 minutes Arcade Centipede - 8 minutes Millipede - 5 minutes Space Invaders - 8 minutes Game Boy Boggle Plus - 97 minutes Solar Striker - 42 minutes Game Boy Color Monopoly - 661 minutes PlayStation Tenchu: Stealth Assassins - 367 minutes Tomb Raider II - 242 minutes Total Play Time This Week 1,462 minutes (24 hours 22 minutes) Individual System Play Times This Week Game Boy Color: 661 minutes PlayStation: 609 minutes Game Boy: 139 minutes Android: 32 minutes Arcade: 21 minutes Just like last week I was on a big Monopoly kick, but this time around I actually won the majority of games I played. I still can't take down the #1 top ranked computer opponent, but I've beaten all the rest now. I also spent a fair bit of time continuing to play through Tomb Raider II, and I know I'm nowhere near done with it yet. I'm sure I've still got at least another 8 hours or more to go, but that's alright by me. I'm really enjoying playing through it again for the first time in years so I have no complaints about the length of the game. I took some time to do a play through of Solar Striker for the Game Boy this week too, and to mix things up a bit this time I decided to play it on the Game Boy Color and tinker around with the color palettes until I found an aesthetically pleasing one that I hadn't used for it before. I ended up going with the "Down arrow and no buttons" palette that's a sort of lavender and pink pastel mix, which sounds really weird for a shoot 'em up but I thought it actually worked really well and made the 4th level boss look especially cool. As far as the other member of my household goes, the misses dedicated all of her gaming time this week to Tenchu: Stealth Assassins on the PlayStation and ended up finishing the story mode with the female ninja character. She did get pretty frustrated with the controls (mostly the very touchy blocking) during a few points in the game, but with some practice she did manage to complete every level and seemed to have a lot of fun with it. No clue as to whether or not she's going to go back and play through it again with the male ninja, but I wouldn't be surprised if she did since I got the impression that she liked the game quite a bit overall. That's all for this week!

I wasn't seriously requesting the thread be locked, it was just a joke based around the events of the Atari 2600 New in Box with unopened PACMAN thread. I thought the "I broke!" part would give it away, but I probably should have been more clear about it. Just doing my part to support the AtariAge store by scaring the everliving daylights out of people and making them fear that if they don't buy Chris Spry's latest game now then one day they might have to pay some absurd amount of money for it on eBay. Seriously though, I sincerely hope he gets more money in royalties from game sales out of this thread than I get for my copy of his previous game; because man does that guy ever deserve it! His work is just consistently brilliant and I don't know if there's anyone who can squeeze as much out batari Basic as that guy can.