Skippy B. Coyote

The last couple of weeks I had gotten my household's gaming time for the week posted but wasn't able to do a proper writeup or take a picture due to a combination of real life distractions and feeling under the weather, so this week it's time to play catch up! Here's the pictures from my household for the past three weeks along with the times for this week and a (hopefully reasonably short) writeup covering all three weeks. October 2nd October 9th October 16th Ineligible Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions (Nintendo 3DS) - 5 minutes StreetPass Mii Plaza (Nintendo 3DS) - 10 minutes Atari 2600 Adventure - 35 minutes Breakout - 20 minutes Kangaroo - 8 minutes Super Football - 200 minutes Venture - 23 minutes Warlords - 26 minutes Atari 7800 Asteroids - 44 minutes Centipede - 6 minutes Dig Dug - 7 minutes Joust - 9 minutes Ms. Pac-Man - 40 minutes Scramble (Emulated on Nintendo Wii) - 135 minutes Xevious - 25 minutes PC-DOS The Ultimate Doom - 138 minutes PlayStation Silent Hill - 56 minutes Total Play Time This Week 787 minutes (13 hours 7 minutes) [772 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Atari 2600: 312 minutes Atari 7800: 266 minutes PC-DOS: 138 minutes PlayStation: 56 minutes Nintendo 3DS: 15 minutes Going back 3 weeks to the end of September and beginning of October, my summer fling with Nintendo's Wii and 3DS was starting to wind down. I did play quite a bit of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, with a determination to finally finish the game this time around, and I was still bringing my 3DS with just about everywhere I went. It wasn't long though before the Atari 7800 High Score Club drew me back in with a Centipede competition, being that Centipede is my favorite game on the 7800, so I decided to fire up my Atari 7800 emulator on the Wii and join in. That quickly led to me getting completely distracted from everything else I was playing that week and emulating a bunch of Atari 7800 games. I did manage to at least continue playing through The Ultimate Doom on the Wii a bit here and there, but other than that it was a mostly 7800 centric week for me once I started playing Centipede. For this misses' gaming time that week she wrapped up her game of Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition with all the special weapons she wanted to unlock then played a bit of emulated Atari 7800 Donkey Kong and Ms. pac-Man with me. Moving on to the week before this past one, after seeing that I was active in the Atari 7800 High Score Club once more, one of my buddies here on AtariAge made me an offer too good to refuse on a composite video modded real Atari 7800 system with a whole bunch of mint condition games (which he literally opened brand new boxes of and sold me the loose carts out of the boxes for dirt cheap) so I could start playing HSC games on real hardware again. Getting the 7800 in the mail really renewed my interest in Atari gaming so almost all I played that week was Atari 2600 and 7800. The spousal unit was pretty excited to have an Atari 7800 in the house again too so she ended up playing a bunch of Asteroids, Dig Dig, and Joust as well. We also played a bit of Haunted House together on the 2600 when she wanted to play something Halloween themed but didn't really want to dedicate the time to starting survival horror game just yet. All in all it was a great week for Atari around here! Finally, getting around to this past week, it was another good week for Atari gaming with a wide variety of Atari 2600 and 7800 games being played. The misses did finally get around to starting a game of Silent Hill on the Playstation, but other than that (and a bit of time spent returning to The Ultimate Doom on my part) it was another mostly Atari filled week for us; especially once she got a Sega Genesis to Atari 7800 controller adapter in the mail. Surprisingly (considering that I'm not much of a sports guy) my favorite game of this past week was one I had never played before until I stumbled on a copy in a local game store last week: Super Football. Of the sports games that I do like on the 2600, Super Football definitely jumped up to near the top of my list after only a few hours playing it, with the only complaint I could really make about the game being the need to keep a copy of the instruction manual (or a HTML copy downloaded from the AtariAge manual database in my case) sitting in your lap while playing to help you remember which numbers correspond to which offense and defense formation selections. I had all the defense plays memorized after about an hour but I think it would take me a good long while to memorize all the offense play options. That's alright though, since the graphics and gameplay were rock solid and the computer AI was surprisingly well crafted to provide an intelligent opponent with just the right level of challenge. I ended up playing four complete games of Super Football on Difficulty 2 over the course of the week and won 3 out of 4, twice with an absolute miracle of a play in the last 20 seconds of the game. I'm not really all that into football and even I loved this game, so I think any football fan with a 2600 should consider Super Football a "must own" game. Looking ahead to next week, in an effort to acquire a few more Atari systems for my 2018 Atari Challenge coming up next year I just got an XEGS in the mail today and a good half a dozen games for it; so I imagine I'll probably be spending a fair bit of time enjoying the XEGS next week. I'm still on the hunt for a Jaguar and a Lynx II, but I am really happy to now have 3 of the 5 Atari systems that I plan to use for my little quest next year. The misses will no doubt continue her game of Silent Hill next week, and I sure would like to wrap up The Ultimate Doom in the not too distant future so I'll be trying to set aside some time to play Doom in addition to all of the new Atari stuff I've been ogling over. Well, I think that about takes care of everything for this week! Until next time, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Pac-Man (Atari 8-Bit Computers): 67,400

Yep, I got the little $0.45 sized container and I only used up half the container at most on the Sega stick. I'm sure it would work great on the NES Advantage and other old arcade sticks as well. The only potential concern is that the Shin-Etsu grease is a silicone based lubricant and I'm not sure whether the membrane contacts in these older arcade sticks are made of silicone or rubber. If they're made of silicone then the grease could cause them to degrade over time, but it was a risk I was willing to take since nothing else seemed to fix the annoying squeakiness. I will open the stick up in 6 months or so and see how the membrane contacts are doing, but at this point I'm just happy it's working well and—as you said—worst case scenario these Genesis sticks aren't expensive to replace.

I got the Shin-Etsu grease in the mail from FocusAttack.com today and wowie zowie does this stuff ever work! After cleaning all the internals of the joystick with q-tips and rubbing alcohol I used a toothpick to apply a very thin coating of Shin-Etsu grease to every spot where one piece of plastic rubbed against another inside the joystick as well as the top and bottom of the spring. The result was a completely squeak-free joystick that is smooth as silk to operate. It feels just like a new leaf spring arcade stick after applying the Shin-Etsu grease and works way better than it ever has before. I ordered 2 little dab sized containers and only ended up using half a container lubricating the stick, and supposedly this stuff is a "apply it once and don't worry about it for a decade" sort of thing. We'll see how well it lasts over the long haul but so far I'd absolutely recommend Shin-Etsu grease to anyone looking to cure a case of the squeakies or just make their Sega Arcade Power Stick smoother and more enjoyable to use. Ms. Pac-Man will thank you.

Awesome fellow! He gave me a great deal on a complete in box near mint condition XEGS set, shipped it fast, and everything arrived safely packed and in perfect working order exactly as described. I would not hesitate to do business with him again any day of the week!

Giving 'em blood and vinegar! Scramble (Normal): 107,160 Scramble (Hard): 94,800

Since I happened upon a nice condition Jaguar I'd like purchase I'll be listing this New 3DS on eBay later tonight to get the funds for it. However, if anyone here would like to purchase the New 3DS before it sells on eBay I'd be willing to go down to $150 + shipping for the boxed system with case and both sets of cover plates included.

I kept meaning to do little writeups on all these games as I went along, then got distracted yet again and wound up with a pile of beaten games so large that I didn't want to devote the time to writing a paragraph about each of them. Sooo... here's a big ol' plain list. 47. T2: The Arcade Game (Game Boy) 48. Touch the Dead (Nintendo DS) 49. Moon Chronicles (Nintendo 3DS) 50. 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Nintendo 3DS) 51. Centipede: Infestation (Nintendo Wii) 52. IronFall: Invasion (Nintendo 3DS) 53. Rayman: Raving Rabbids (Nintendo Wii) 54. Sonic Generations (Nintendo 3DS) 55. The House of the Dead: Overkill (Nintendo Wii) 56. Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition (Nintendo Wii) 57. Mortal Kombat (Sega Genesis) 58. Link's Crossbow Training (Nintendo Wii) 59. Haunted House (Atari 2600) 60. Super Football (Atari 2600) 61. Breakout (Atari 2600) 62. Warlords (Atari 2600)

Harmony Encore or bust!

Sentinel for me. It gets a lot of flak for not being as good as Duck Hunt on the NES but personally I really enjoy Sentinel and have played through and beat it many times. The real challenge is finding an accurately shooting light gun to play it with.

Is it my lucky month or something? Last round we played Centipede, which is my favorite original production Atari 7800 game, and now this round we're playing Scramble; my favorite homebrew Atari 7800 game! Anyhoo, time to fire off an opening volley over the Stern... Scramble (Normal): 102,420 Scramble (Hard): 67,370

I should also mention that, if anyone is interested, I would be willing to leave the three games for the 3DS out and trade for a Jaguar without games or without composite cables. I would also be up for selling just the boxed New 3DS system and carrying case with no games included for $160 + shipping, so I could take the money and go buy a Jaguar.

Hello again ladies and gentlegamers! This time I've got a very special 3DS console that I'm interested in trading for an Atari Jaguar. As usual, to give you a reference for my reliability as a buyer and 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 You can also find my AtariAge Marketplace User Feedback thread here: http://atariage.com/...pic/254880-jin/ Now that we've got the formalities out of the way, here's what I've got for trade: This black colored model of the regular sized New 3DS was only available in limited quantities on Black Friday of 2016 and was never produced again in North America after that, so it was the only way to get a black New 3DS in the United States. I ended up buying this one brand new in box from a collector around two months ago, bought a carrying case and a few games for it as well as some purple faceplates that I imported from Japan, and now I'm looking to trade it for an Atari Jaguar system to use for my 2018 Atari Challenge quest. The system's box is perfect mint without a single ding or scratch on it and the system itself is in excellent condition with no scratches on the exterior housing or faceplates, no scratches on the interior housing or upper screen, no dead or stuck pixels on either screen, and only a few very tiny scratches on the lower screen from occasional stylus use. I tried my best to photograph them in the 4th picture but they're just too darn small for my camera to pick up, and completely invisible when the system is powered on. The black Mario faceplates that came with the system are brand new and have never been used, the carrying case is in perfect like-new condition, and the 3 games are all complete in box with near mint cartridges. The only damage to any of the games is the cover art on the case for Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions, which does have quite a bit of wear. All together I spent about $265 on everything seen above, and being that this particular model of New 3DS was a very limited and sought after release it's sure to hold it's value in the years to come. What I would like to trade this whole bundle for is a nice condition Atari Jaguar system with power supply, one controller (preferably a gray button one), and either an official composite video cable or somewhere in the area of $30 worth of good quality Jaguar games. I can also toss in some cash via PayPal on my end of the trade for a few more Jaguar games or ones high up on my wants list like Alien vs. Predator, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Towers II, or Raiden. Thanks for taking the time to view my thread and just shoot me a PM if you're interested in trading!

You got it. I'm sure if someone was really clever they could come up with a way to emulate NES games and the like on one of the later 16-bit Atari computers, but that would go against the spirit of the challenge. So if you're looking for loopholes in the rules to play non-Atari system games on an Atari system then this challenge probably isn't for you. I will admit that I am looking forward to trying out Zippy the Porcupine though!

Of the options available I'd go with the Odyssey 2. It's the easiest to find games for (a couple local game stores around here have a small stack of them, whereas games for the other systems are non-existent around here) and it should be a fairly affordable and reliable system to pick up and start enjoying. The Channel F would be my second pick, since it's interesting from a historical perspective (being the first home console with cartridge based games) and it has a decent variety of games to play on it that won't break the bank and shouldn't be too difficult to find. There's also a pretty enthusiastic fan community for the Channel F, with new homebrew games coming out for it like the excellent Pac-Man.

Don't feel too bad guys, I honestly don't expect anyone else to come along on this journey with me. With all the gaming options vying for your attention in this day and age it would be a very difficult for any retro gaming enthusiast to stick to just Atari systems for a whole year, but that is kind of the point. I've gotten into this routine for the last half a decade or so where I always play the same Game Boy, PlayStation, GameCube, and Wii games every year; and I've grown bored with the routine and want to force myself to explore some Atari systems that I've always meant to but never quite gotten around to. Will I find myself going a little nuts and wishing I could play a Zelda or Resident Evil game after a few months of nothing but Atari? Maybe so, but it will certainly shake up my routine and it wouldn't be any fun if it wasn't a challenge. I imagine I'll probably spend a lot more time reading books and catching up on movies and TV shows next year than I have in years past, but either way this thread will serve to chronicle the fun (and likely frustration) of gaming like a die hard Atari fan from 1995 for a whole year. I have a feeling that me and the Jaguar are going to become good buddies for a long while, since that will be the most modern system I can play.

It's been a few years and my Genesis stick still squeaks like nobody's business, and I've been wanting to use it to play Atari lately so I finally shelled out the $5 after shipping costs for a couple dabs of imported Shin-Etsu joystick grease from Focus Attack: https://www.focusattack.com/fa-dab-20-ounce-shin-etsu-silicone-grease-vial/ If that doesn't fix the squeaking I don't think anything will! I'll be sure to let you guys and gals know how it works out when the grease arrives in the mail this weekend or early next week.

What is the 2018 Atari Challenge? It's quite simple really! The 2018 Atari Challenge is a challenge to only play video games on Atari produced consoles and/or computers for the entirety of 2018. Sound crazy? Of course it does, it wouldn't be a challenge if it didn't! Who is this challenge for? I came up with the idea for this challenge primarily to help myself focus my game playing and collecting in 2018, after a decade or so of jumping around between collecting games for a dozen or more different systems and never quite knowing what to buy or play next. However, anyone else who would like to participate is certainly welcome to! Whether you're someone with a large assortment of Atari systems and games to choose from already or just looking for a good reason to branch out and explore new Atari systems and games that you've never played before, you're welcome to come join me on this journey as I explore all that the world of Atari has to offer in 2018. Which systems are eligible? Any console or computer ever produced by any incarnation of Atari. The 2600, 5200, 7800, XEGS, Lynx, Jaguar and any of the vast array of computers in the Atari catalog. Also eligible are Atari's dedicated consoles such as Pong and Video Pinball, as well as systems produced by the modern incarnation of Atari like the Atari Flashback series. Emulating games for Atari consoles or computers on other non-Atari hardware (your usual home computer, Raspberry Pi, Wii, Xbox, etc.) is just fine, as long as the games you're emulating were originally produced for an Atari brand system. I think that about covers all the important bits! I decided to start the thread for the 2018 Atari Challenge a few months early in case anyone else decides that they'd like to participate, to give them time to track down and acquire any Atari systems they'd like to use for the coming year before the challenge begins. Personally I currently own an Atari 2600 and 7800, have an XEGS in the mail on it's way to me, and will be trying my darndest to pick up a Jaguar and Lynx II before 2018 starts to round out my Atari system selection for this crazy experiment. I have no idea how this challenge is going to turn out, but it should be an interesting adventure!

The XEGS has been acquired! I'm still looking for some common inexpensive Atari 8-Bit cartridges to give me something to play on my new system though, so feel free to shoot me a PM if anyone has some cheapies they'd like to sell.

Good to know Albert, hopefully Google sorts out whatever has gone screwy in their website format detection software. It seems to only happen on the main forum directory page for me. Here's a screenshot for reference: And if I click the pop up at the bottom of the screen I get:

I've been getting the same "Make page mobile-friendly" pop up on my 2013 Google Nexus 7 tablet all the time on AtariAge lately. Seems like it just started a week or two ago.

I'm not generally a big fan of sports games, but after picking a copy of Super Football for the 2600 from a local game store the other day and being rather shocked by how good it was it occurred to me that there's actually a pretty decent amount of sports games on the 2600 that I still find playable and fun to this day. Super Football definitely jumped up to near the top of my list after only a few hours playing it, with the only complaint I could really make about the game being the need to keep a copy of the instruction manual (or a HTML copy downloaded from the AtariAge manual database in my case) sitting in your lap while playing to help you remember which numbers correspond to which offense and defense formation selections. I had all the defense plays memorized after about an hour but I think it would take me a good long while to memorize all the offense play options. That's alright though, since the graphics and gameplay were rock solid and the computer AI was surprisingly well crafted to provide an intelligent opponent with just the right level of challenge. Some other favorites of mine are Pete Rose Baseball, which really astounds with it's graphics and decently balanced computer AI (even if it is one of those "instruction manual required" sort of games when it comes to learning the controls), and the more pick up and play friendly titles Miniature Golf, Bowling, and Activision's Ice Hockey and Tennis. Miniature Golf and Ice Hockey in particular are two games that I can still get the misses or a friend to sit down and play with me pretty much any time, since the controls are simple and intuitive and the gameplay is still a ton of fun to this day. I should also give a nod to RealSports Boxing, which may be the best 1 vs 1 fighting game on the system and offers a pretty solid single player experience complete with modern fighting game conventions like health bars and the ability to knock your opponent out. How about you guys and gals? What are your favorite Atari 2600 sports titles?