Skippy B. Coyote

Before you start spending a stacks of cash on multimeters and other tools that you've probably never used before and might not know what to do with I'd recommend keeping your troubleshooting simple and try replacing the power supply first. Those things can and do go bad from time to time, so it's entirely possible that could be the source of your trouble.

It's going to be a pretty short list for me this week. Ineligible Doom II (Game Boy Advance) - 47 minutes Tomb Raider: Underworld (Nintendo Wii) - 698 minutes Wade Hixton's Counter Punch (Game Boy Advance) - 73 minutes PlayStation Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 391 minutes Total Play Time This Week 1,209 minutes (20 hours 9 minutes) [391 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Nintendo Wii: 698 minutes PlayStation: 391 minutes Game Boy Advance: 120 minutes While the overall play time in my household this week wasn't all that different than usual, the number of games played—and particularly tracker eligible ones—was much smaller than our typical assortment. As I continue to recover from the thyroid surgery three weeks ago it was recommended that I avoid stressful activities, so for the time being I'm taking a break from my usual participation in the Atari 2600 and Atari 7800 High Score Clubs and sticking to only playing games that I will find relaxing to play and won't get stressed out over. For me this past week that was my old favorite Doom II on the Game Boy Advance along with my recently acquired copy of the exceedingly awesome Wade Hixton's Counter Punch, though the bulk of my gaming time this week was taken up by Tomb Raider: Underworld on the Nintendo Wii. Last week I played through Tomb Raider: Legend on the GameCube, which was an absolutely astounding game in every regard, and while I can't say that it's story continuing sequel Tomb Raider: Underworld is quite as good I've still been having a lot of fun with it. The collision detection in Underworld can be a little (okay, a lot) wonky at times and the lack of an auto-save feature has caused me to have to spend about 3 hours going back and replaying levels that I had already beaten when either the game crashed or I simply forgot to save before quitting, but in spite of the moments of frustration here and there the game's fantastic story, beautiful graphics, and enjoyable gameplay mechanics have all kept me engrossed to the point that I didn't mind having to replay a couple levels. I'm not sure exactly how far I have left to go in the game, but based on where I'm at in the story at this point I don't think it's going to be too long before I finish it. The GBA games Doom II and Counter Punch on the other hand should take me a fair bit longer to wrap up. For the misses this past week there was one and only one game she played, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PlayStation. I did end up hogging the gaming TV a lot this week so I don't think she was able to play quite as much as she would have liked, but she still got in enough play time to make it just over halfway through the game and is currently exploring the second castle. She has remarked that she's been really enjoying going back and playing through this excellent game once again, and that Symphony of the Night is definitely in her Top 10 favorite games on the PlayStation. Based on my memories of playing it as a teenager I'd be inclined to agree with her. Looking ahead to next week I'm planning on wrapping up Tomb Raider: Underworld and then starting on a few other recent Wii pickups, so my tracker eligible play time might be relatively non-existent next week as well, but the misses still has quite a ways to go in Symphony of the Night so if nothing else I'm sure she'll score some eligible play time for our household. I'm not sure when exactly I'll resume playing in the Atari 2600 and 7800 High Score Clubs, it could still be a few more weeks before I feel up to handling that kind of stress again, but I'm not too worried about it since I've been pretty far ahead in 2nd place for the Atari 2600 High Score Club for some time now so I can afford to miss a few rounds and still hold onto my standing. Anyway, until next time, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours!

It's just fine, this thread served it's purpose for me and all my Atari 7800 stuff except for two games have gone to new homes now. If anyone wants a reproduction cart of Klax or Possible Mission (made by AtariAge's own very talented Shawn) just shoot me a PM.

Okie dokie. Probably not going to be anything for me this round then.

Just a quick question about the "Don't play any games this week" bonus option. Is it "No Atari games" or "No games period"? I ask because I'm feeling a little burnt out on the stress of playing games for high scores and probably won't be competing this round, but I have been playing a couple relaxing story focused games on the Wii and Game Boy Advance to help pass the time this week.

36. Tomb Raider: Legend (GameCube) Up until I played through Tomb Raider: The Prophecy on the Game Boy Advance a couple weeks ago I hadn't touched a Tomb Raider game in years, but that one was great fun so I decided to give another game in the series a try. Simply put, Tomb Raider: Legend is awesome! It's got huge sprawling levels with gorgeous levels of graphical detail, a really nice balance between puzzle solving and combat, and some motorcycle driving sequences sprinkled in here and there to mix things up. The story was totally engrossing and wonderfully creative, and the only complaint I could really make about the game is that the story left off on a huge cliffhanger that make me have to run off to eBay and buy the next game in the series (Tomb Raider: Underworld, which I'm currently playing on the Wii) as soon as I finished Legend. This game is definitely a semi-modern classic and I'd highly recommend it to any fan of the action/adventure genre.

When it comes to video games there's always going to be things to complain about no matter what time period you examine, though for me personally determining when (if there ever was) the "best" time period for gaming was really comes down to finding a balance between two factors: Game variety and game delivery method. The current modern age of gaming is certainly the best for variety, since more games exist now than have ever existed before and whether through physical game compilations, hardware based backwards compatibility, or digital downloads all the modern systems offer some way to play their respective companies' classics of olde. What keeps the modern age of gaming from being golden to me though are the game delivery methods that are currently in vogue. Digital downloads, game installations, games being released unfinished because they can always be patched later via online download, DLC, mandatory online connectivity, lack of paper instruction manuals, and so on all hamper the simplicity of use that console gamers have enjoyed in the past. Being able to just pop in a cartridge or disc, power on the system, and play your game is what has always made playing video games on consoles more attractive than computers for a great many people. So what would I consider to be the "Golden Age" of gaming? Well, it's going to be the time period when consoles had the greatest variety of games available and the most graphical power at their disposal; but before the rise of all those issues with modern gaming that I just went over. For home consoles that would be the PlayStation 2, original Xbox, GameCube, and Dreamcast era; and for handhelds it would be the Game Boy Advance through DS Lite timeframe. So figure around the years 2000 to 2004 for all the systems mentioned. At that point in history consoles had the largest variety of games to choose from of any point prior to the rise of the modern game delivery system, but all the annoyances of modern gaming had yet to exist because online connectivity was never required for anything outside of a small handful of MMO RPGs. There were no update patches to download, no installing games to a system hard drive, no DLC, and none of the other issues that bug so many people about modern gaming. The early 2000's is when gaming was at it's best for me personally.

Thank goodness for Mrs. Jin and her PlayStation, otherwise we wouldn't have hardly any tracker eligible time to contribute this week! Ineligible Doom II (Game Boy Advance) - 115 minutes Tomb Raider: Legend (GameCube) - 614 minutes Wade Hixton's Counter Punch (Game Boy Advance) - 168 minutes Atari 2600 Ms. Pac-Man - 57 minutes Atari 7800 Pac-Man Collection! - 11 minutes NES Xevious (played on Classic NES Series: Xevious for Game Boy Advance) - 23 minutes PlayStation Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 180 minutes Crypt Killer - 41 minutes Tomb Raider - 92 minutes Total Play Time This Week 1,301 minutes (21 hours 41 minutes) [404 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week GameCube: 614 minutes PlayStation: 313 minutes Game Boy Advance: 283 minutes Atari 2600: 57 minutes NES: 23 minutes Atari 7800: 11 minutes Between my continued exploration of the Tomb Raider series and a couple games on the Game Boy Advance I don't have a whole lot of tracker eligible time to contribute this week. I spent the majority of the past week playing through the exceptionally awesome Tomb Raider: Legend on the GameCube, the story of which ended on a huge cliffhanger and—as I found out after doing a little research online—is continued in Tomb Raider: Underworld on the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3. I don't own an Xbox 360 or PS3 but I do have a Wii, so as soon as I found out the story of Tomb Raider: Legend was continued in a game for a system that I do own I ran off to eBay and picked up a copy of Tomb Raider: Underworld for quite reasonable $8. That game should be arriving in the mail tomorrow, but in the meantime I kept myself busy by working on playing through a few games on the Game Boy Advance. The first was Doom II, which is an old favorite that I usually play through once every year, and the second was a more recent find that I picked up from a local game store this week. By some incredible stroke of luck I stumbled on a near-mint condition copy of Wade Hixton's Counter Punch for the GBA for $1.95 at a used game store in a nearby mall, which is pretty astonishing since it's a game that generally sells for $20 to $30. I'm guessing whoever was pricing the games when that one went out on the shelf meant to price it at $19.50 but misplaced the decimal point, but in any case I wasn't going to argue about it and snapped the game up as soon as I saw it. It didn't take long for me to figure out why this game generally sells for so much, since it's by far my favorite Punch-Out!! style game I've ever played. The cel shaded animation is beautiful, the writing and dialog are really witty, the character designs are hilariously wonderful, and it's just the perfect portable game for a quick 10 or 15 minute game break. I've still got two fighters that I've yet to beat in it, and it'll probably take me some time to beat them and finish the game since it does get pretty challenging towards the end. Fortunately I can still go back and challenge previous fighters again and earn some extra cash to buy attack upgrades with, which is fun and easy to do any time I have a few minutes to spare. Moving on to the misses' gaming time for the week, it was an all PlayStation week for her this past week. She started off the week by finishing up her game in the original Tomb Raider with ease (I don't think she died even once on the last level from what I saw) then, after a couple days of pondering what to play next, started in on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. She played through this one a couple years ago and really enjoyed it so it seemed like just the thing to fill some time while she waits for a couple games that she hasn't played yet to arrive in the mail from sellers on eBay. She also found a nicer condition copy of Crypt Killer than the one she already owned last week and snapped it up right away, since her previous copy had the UPC cut out of the back of the case artwork and manual, and we spent a bit of time playing it together to test it out. Crypt Killer is always fun for short bursts of light gun shooting action and the time we spent playing it this week was no exception. As far as what next week has in store I think it's safe to say that it probably won't be much different from this past week. The spousal unit will likely be continuing her play through of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PlayStation and with quite a ways left to go in Doom II on the GBA and Tomb Raider: Underworld for the Wii arriving in the mail tomorrow I doubt I'll have much tracker eligible gaming time to contribute. It should still be a darn fun week for gaming though! Until next time, and as always, best wishes and happy gaming to you and yours.

Excellent seller! I contacted him about buying a Game Boy game, he was extremely quick to rely and professional with his responses, and got my game shipped very quickly once it was paid for. The game arrived a couple days later in perfect condition and works great! I would definitely be happy to do business with Tanooki again any day of the week.

Classic NES Series: Xevious (Game Boy Advance) Doom II (Game Boy Advance) Tomb Raider: Legend (GameCube)

You got it! I know how fragile and brittle the plastic on the 7800's shell is so you can rest assured that it will be very well wrapped in bubble wrap and packed in an extra sturdy box with lots of padding. I'll get your new Atari 7800 system mailed out this afternoon.

No need to worry Keatah, I'm done with the Atari 7800 for good now. It has joined the ranks of the ColecoVision and NES as a "emulation only system" for me.

Forget the calculator watches, what you need is:

It is done. My Atari 7800 and all remaining games are now up for sale on eBay, and wow does it ever feel good to finally be done with it and get this weight off my shoulders. If any of you might be interested in buying the system or any of my games you can find my eBay account here: http://www.ebay.com/usr/hanz0d0g

Thanks dj_convoy! I actually made that list a couple years ago when my wife was starting to get into collecting for the PS1 and wanted to know what all the good games on the system were and what to expect to pay for them. I spent a few months going through GameFAQs.com and reading the user and critic reviews of every single game released for the PlayStation in North America to figure out what the best games in each genre were, and which ones probably weren't worth the time / money. I love doing exhaustive game research projects like this and my wife has certainly found the list that I came up with helpful, so it's already served it's purpose, but if it helps others here too then that's great!

I can't say I ever did the latter, but once I did buy an NES Mini from Best Buy for $60 then resold it on eBay for $260 less than an hour after getting home with it. That was the one and only time in my life that I ever bought something with the intention to resell it, but the money was just too good to pass up. It was basically Nintendo saying "Hey, we'll pay you $200 to get up early and go stand in line outside this store for a couple hours."