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dave1dmarx

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Everything posted by dave1dmarx

  1. By the way... Ride of Valkyries WAS used in the PlayCable menus in 1982. The menu had four different songs. I didn't make a video for it because, to me it was a "commonly" available song, as it was used in both Checkers and Sub Hunt. Sorry if I neglected to point out that it was actually an original menu song as well.
  2. Interesting how this version differs slightly from the original PlayCable unit, beyond the obvious. The load beeps for example, they are spaced further apart on here than on the actual machine. I wonder why that is? Also, is the recording they made of the original PlayCable signal still in existence? I kick myself for not thinking of trying to capture the signal myself back in the day, but given my crude technology at the time, it's unlikely that even if I had, that the signal would be usable today. Either way, great job!!
  3. Wow!! I know I'm way late to the party here, but I haven't been checking in too much lately... All I can say is amazing job as always, decle. You really deserve some type of medal to dig this stuff up and preserve it. Now if only I can get clean copies of the audio for the menus incorporated as part of my modded Flashback system, instead of my cassette versions. Seriously, great work. Thanks so much for bringing my memories to life. ?
  4. Most definitely. One of my favorite Intellivision games because of that strategy element.
  5. Good to know! BTW, here's the video of the second half of the game:
  6. Good to know. I'm checking it out now. What does the percent mean? Percent of the high score??
  7. I have a modded version of the Intellivision Flashback. By "modded", I mean that it was modded to play all the games (not just the 60 on the Flashback) from the original ROMs rather than the modified versions on the actual Flashback. (I hope I'm explaining this right). Anyway, the upshot is it's like playing the original games on the original controllers. Well, I just had a killer game of Buzz Bombers where everything lined up and I was able to stack multiple beehives. My final score was 311,200 which seems to be a high score as I cannot find record of a higher score anywhere. Once I realized I was going to be racking up points due to the placement of honeycombs, I started to record the game with my phone. I'm uploading the video to YouTube and will post it once it's ready, but I gotta warn y'all - I curse a little bit here and there. ? Anyway, here's the screen shot for now...
  8. Hi All!! Simple question - does a MAME playable ROM exist for this title and if so, where would one find it? I saw this gmae in a retro arcade yesterday and immediately fell in love with it. Thanks!
  9. Late to the party, but I recall seeing both Astrocade and the MP-1000 at Montgomery Ward's in 1980-81. I had wanted the Astrocade for Christmas 1980, but it was too expensive, so my mom got us the MP-1000, which was much cheaper (either $99- or $149- compared to $249- for the Astrocade). As I recall, there was an elaborate kiosk set up for the Astrocarde (probably what was shown on the previous page, but I can't be sure), but nothing special for the MP-1000, although there definitely was one on display (without a cartridge, so the only playable game was Rocket Patrol.
  10. The gym I go to has an abundance of em. Go find your own, millenial! ?
  11. I can sure relate to that! I'm 49 and go to the gym just to run on the treadmill, which I do for an hour (6.5 miles). I see so many people (20-somethings usually) who hop on and off the treadmills, running for five, maybe ten minutes. Meanwhile, this old guy here keeps chugging along! I still feel the energy and vitality I had in my 20s for the most part and I'm always open to learning new things. I'd hate to be complacent in life - at any age. So when I hear stereotypes about "old people this" or "old people that", it does bug me because in my case I don't feel it applies at all.
  12. Do people really care about labels (Gen X, Boomer, Millenial, etc.)?? I mean they seem like just ways to go about systematically hating someone for no good reason, right (unless the calendar year one happened to be born in is compelling enough reason for this hatred)? I'm here because I love classic video games, period. Does it really matter whether I was born in 1970, 1950 or 2000? As the French might say, Sacre Bleu!!
  13. Sixteen Candles is great! Weird Science too.
  14. Brought my modded Flashback, which now has every Intv game - including prototypes - along with every 2600, 7800 + Colecovision game (thanks Eddie!) up to my mom's in Poughkeepsie, NY and played Backgammon (with her), Snafu, Carnival + Frogger (with my sister).
  15. Hi decle, Thanks for taking the time to do all that work! I've had a chance to listen to the roms and yeah, I guess it would be a rather difficult task to completely re-create the tunes from scratch. While decent attempts, none really come remotely close to replicating what's on the cassette recordings. The music.rom file came the closest, until (like you said) the chords kicked in and it became a mess. As far as picking out the notes goes, while I am okay at playing piano by ear, to totally recreate something like that Ragtime tune (does ANYONE out there know the actual name for it??) would be a daunting task. And even if I were able to accomplish this, I wouldn't know how to transpose what I'm playing into anything useful for a potential programmer. So, I guess the mono cassette recordings will have to stand as the best representation of those songs as how they actually sounded back then. Still, I admire the time and effort you put in, and while The Entertainer isn't quite the PlayCable version, it was quite entertaining in its own right. So thanks for making the effort, decle. It is very much appreciated!
  16. Almost forgot to upload the final song from the PlayCable menu. This time it's Music Box Dancer. I wish I had better visuals to go with the audio, but at least all three rare songs are now "out there"!
  17. It looks like the errors have extended to your post! You mention Bowling, yet the photo in your post shows Boxing.
  18. I have no knowledge/experience programming in the Intv, so I wouldn't know where to begin. I was hoping that folks with more experience/know-how might want to take a crack at it. As for the beeps at the beginning, they were present at the start of every game load, sounding exactly the same. I think it was just in there to give the user the sense that SOMETHING was happening while they waited for the game to load. If anything was capable of re-creating the PlayCable signal, it would have been whatever was coming from the "ADAPTOR" RCA jack on the RF box as THAT was what was feeding the unit all the info. Unfortunately, I never thought to try and make a recording of that. And, given my crude methods for recording, it's very doubtful that such a recording would even be useful to us here in 2017.
  19. Each page was the same, style-wise. The screen was similar to the splash screen in that it had the same starry background with the same "push disc" message on the bar at the bottom (white text on a green bar, IIRC) The games were arranged alphabetically in the menus and were four to a page, and each was numbered like this (for example): 1. ARMOR BATTLE 2. ASTROSMASH 3. BACKGAMMON 4. BASEBALL To select a game from a page, you simply pressed the corresponding number and "Enter". The game would then load up, with the same short beeps you hear at the beginning of the video (though it would last for about 5-10 seconds), leading to four long beeps (like the two heard on the video). The title screen would then be displayed as if the system was just powered up with the cartridge in. If you wanted to return to the PlayCable menu, you had to hit reset (or power off/on) as there was no way to do it from the hand controllers.
  20. The RF switch box had two RCA inputs - one labeled GAME (for the Intellivision) and another labeled ADAPTOR. The coax for cable TV also went into the box so, I imagine there was a signal being sent that was specifically for PlayCable. We still used the RF box to connect cable to our TV for about a decade after we got rid of PlayCable (as the box worked just fine for regular cable as well), but it's long gone by now at my mom's house.
  21. That "someone" may have been my brother! I'll reach out and see if HE remembers exactly what the cost was.
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