MrBlackCat

I'll read the Original Post with focus later... but my first reaction is... sounds like a basis for a game! "Retro-Bubble!: Don't Blow It!" "Retro-Bubble: Inflation" "Retro-Bubble: A New Hope" "Retro-Double-Bubble!" Ok, seriously though, I don't believe in the idea of hobbies as investments. I view them, weather material or not, as paid entertainment like a movie you go watch. It is spent, it is experienced. I only "lose" if the game isn't enjoyable. Gaming for me isn't a fad, investment, and isn't socially driven. If gaming or game collecting IS an investment for you, then you are at risk as with any investment... I can't loose as I haven't gambled. If I were to ever sell anything I have "collected" then it is pure profit as it was all absorbed when I had more money to spend than I needed to live. More later after I really soak up that post that really deep, or at least long. MrBlackCat

Well... maybe not ME... but I do enjoy living vicariously the life and times of Duke Nukem. The Irony... Gum and "Steroids"... I may never run out! MrBlackCat

When I look around my game room, it isn't the cost of the games that jump out at me. I like merchandise from my favorite games. I always have, and that is where some fairly large single chunks of budget goes. Sure I have a lot of different DooM games (for basically every system it would run on) but as far a single expense, this exceeds the cost of most any single games I have bought... Same with Duke Nukem... I enjoy most every Duke Nukem game, as might be evident from this older image... But I love the "everything else", and that is where I probably spend more money than the actual games. Maybe not overall, but in larger chunks. I don't really know my limit on a most desired game for my collection, but it probably is lower than my limit on merchandise from my favorite franchises. MrBlackCat

This is what I like to see... these guys have their product together it seems. Look how fast they funded. This seems SO much more legitimate that the Ataribox drama. I hope we end up needing a thread for these guys. MrBlackCat

D!Zone 75 in the "Picture Box"... I have the "Skull Box" only of the two 75's. I just googled it real quick to insert an image of it, but didn't even find that. Yeah, it's rare. I have only seen it a couple of times ever, in others collections. I don't think I have ever seen it in the wild. Could have been a non-US only or other regional release of some kind. I would really like to have it... so on topic, how much am I willing to pay for it? I don't even know that myself... depends on my budget at the time I find it I suppose. I don't HAVE to have it, but as far as I know, it would be the completion of my D!Zone for DooM collection... and that has a substantial value to me. This is a good example of why, in my case, I would not be able to just throw out a number of how much would I pay for a game... but to answer the OP in the context of my position, I could say what is the most I have ever been willing to pay for any game... going to look at my eSnipe account for that one. <insert some time here> It seems I am crazy... I forgot about a couple of those. I will just leave it at A LOT! At least in the past. Most of the expensive stuff has been PC FPS's pre-Windows though. Doesn't mean I got them, but I have been outbid when I was at many hundreds of dollars... but I was willing to pay that at the time. At least those few extra-high ones I didn't get, so it shows me I was on track with what their value was to others as well as myself. MrBlackCat

My view on what a video game is worth is one of relativity. The old saying that "something is only worth what you can get for it" might hold true when someone says "this shirt cost $50, but I got it for $19.95"... it isn't a $50 shirt then, at least in my mind. But what about availability? Once I was trying to buy something on eBay (this predates auto-bidding) I was attempting to manually snipe a game I wanted... I had no idea of its value, it was just an uncommon boxed PC DOS game I wanted. (a DooM-alike game with 3D Glasses) I bid in the last minute or so (modem days, couldn't cut it as close as current times)... I was outbid. I raised my bid again. Outbid. I raised my bid to say $35... Outbid. Out of curiosity, I raised my bid to $150... Outbid, and auction ended. WTH?! I contacted the winning bidder (because you could back then) and they had put over $1000 on it. Was it worth that? To them it was because they wanted it for an unusual reason like collecting 3D Glasses games or something and this was literally their last one to get. I didn't really understand until my game wanted list began to dwindle and rarity started to claw at my desired pay levels. Examples of why value is mostly relative... neurosis and "what we want". I like the game of DooM for PC... and I really like its add-ons like D!Zone series. I like boxed First Person Shooters pre-Windows... so I get down to all but one of my desired D!Zones (I am still missing one more in the series actually, but I have only seen it on others collection). They started getting rare, like less than one a year showing on eBay years ago. I don't remember which one it was, but I wanted it off my wanted list. I wanted the series complete... so its value goes up more. It doesn't matter if it has always sold for $30 if you can't encounter one... so its worth is relative now to my collection. I don't think I ended up paying a whole lot for it, but I did snipe it really high. Another example would be one from a few years ago when I wanted some game... I offered someone a rather high sum of money for this really rare game they didn't have a buy it now on. They didn't want to end the auction because they couldn't be sure I would pay if the changed it. It went for very little and I was high-bidder anyway, but I the point is that I was willing to pay a relatively large amount for the game. (say $150+) Is it worth that? Probably only to me. Last example was recent... Deer Avenger 4... that is SO hard to find boxed, and Big Boxed. I had not seen it big-boxed for over five years when one finally turned up. I loaded my auto-sniper pretty darn high on it... I don't remember what, but it was less than $300. Why was it worth so much? It isn't really... it is just relative. This is why it held so much value to me... wanting to complete this. (Ok, i don't have Deer Avenger: Stag Party add-on, but I am not pushing that one really) This is an older image... the Deer Avenger 1 and 2 are in the upper right... three was not up at the time I suppose, but now I have all four of them. If I want something, I quantify how much I am willing to pay for it... one of the main ways is "how much enjoyment" will I get from buying one item at greater expense, or many items of lesser expense. Then comes, how much do I have budgeted, and how many weeks of that budget are going to be worth "tying up"... if something else comes along after I have blown the budget, oh well, I don't get it, with few exceptions. MrBlackCat

Maybe the AtariBox just streams sound for video sources, music, and bluetooth for our smartphones straight to one of several styles of "Atari Hat"... and we get to PICK which hat we want! I mean nobody likes those silly blue-tooth things stuck in their ears really. I might go with the Atari Aviator hat for the most direct sound... but the Atari Baseball cap is very safe really, but maybe I will get the Atari Cowboy speaker-hat for getting in touch with my redneck side. Ok, sarcasm off... but now there is nothing left I can say without sarcasm, considering how silly this non-revel is. When a company has to let you know a date they are going to let you know something about a product that will be crowd-funded? Seriously? The economy is not SO bad that if you have a "real" product to put out, you can get someone to back it. I find this whole thing an annoyance. I thought the hat thing was a joke though... MrBlackCat

Commodore Vic 20's. My father got us one fairly early on. Actually, I attended a small red-neck school near where we lived and I was the only student with a computer at the time. For a while, I would bring the Vic-20 to school each day and let the principle play with and taught him some programming in BASIC for a few minutes after school each day. He got his own by the next year as I remember. Shortly after that, I got a Vic-Modem (300!) and got on Compuserve I think it was at the time... so I have been BlackCat or MrBlackCat since 1984. Second was a Commondore 64 (SX Actually) I got at a pawn shop very reasonably. With its awesome Floppy Disk drive I could save stuff crazy fast, and fairly reliably. MrBlackCat

I agree that this retro-active "Launch Edition" tendency is garbage, deceptive, and wastes my time... I just add (-"Launch Edition") I don't want to buy from sellers that allow this, or actually use this retro-actively. MrBlackCat

I would buy an improved feature Intellivision and ColecoVision to go with the "need some improvements" models I have now. I would like to see this happen. MrBlackCat

I have the PS One with Sony 5" LCD. When I saw this post and then looked around a bit, I was surprised how high they have gotten. Unmotivated people are going to put a finite amount of effort into "anything", like researching prices. If you feel like you really earn the money you are going to spend on something, it will motivate you to look for a reasonable price. Anyway, enough of that... I have almost no use for the 5" LCD screen as far as anything practical, but I set it up and play on it periodically just because it is something unique and something I would have loved to have as a younger child. Here is mine... If I see any turn up at a reasonable price, I will message you. MrBlackCat

All the drama surrounding this console has gotten to be no fun to me. I just wanted it to be over... so bought a used one with no box or anything for $125.00 I just want a unit and to be done with it. The sense of relief is more than I expected. It was no longer an enjoyable toy-hunt for me. This thread started off so positive... a shame. (Thanks Nintendo, grumble,grumble,grumble) Just a few days and maybe all this silly Nintendo craving will be satisfied... then I can return focus to the next releases of AtGames consoles. That new Genesis is SO freakin' cute! Can't wait! Oh, and thanks GoldLeader for the heads up on those knockoff "Chinendo Mini's" with 500 games... as a general gamer, I try to get as many of those different types of units as I have time to try out. I ordered one of those also. MrBlackCat

The selling point of the Nintendo Mini Classic for me was that I could play/keep the games as long as I wanted, without a subscription to expire and without a "Product Life Cycle"... this news is mostly just an annoyance. MrBlackCat

Those tiny consoles are SO freakin cute though... the games don't all suck. There is always a few games I enjoy on them, anyway. I have a mini arcade of those things. I have about 50 or so Plug N Play games of different types, and I too noticed just how great the decline in them has been. I wish they would keep making them, but I am also really happy with the ones I have now. MrBlackCat

I can't see where to pre-order this... (Hehehe... TAKE MY MONEY!) MrBlackCat

Windows 10? MrBlackCat

Ahhh... I have seen that done. I was hoping it was something I had missed. Super cute. Thanks for the reply. MrBlackCat

Thanks for the video... I am sure they will get better with time. I watched the video mostly to learn what was going on with the Genesis here... it looks just like the Genesis USB Hub with a controller next to it, or is this some Genesis variation that I have missed? MrBlackCat

Hehe... wait! The point is that you don't even have to open it! Someone will be selling pre-made ways to do this on eBay in no time. Just like the guy with the pre-made SD Cards for the Atari Flashback Portable. Most likely, someone will just be selling the units with additional games already installed. MrBlackCat

Much of this probably has to do with Windows 10 default sector sizes or any of several other factors that are mostly automatic... there is a lot to formatting that is mostly behind the scenes. If you Google for FAT or FAT32 and Windows 10, all you see is a lot of people telling each other what program to use to do it... Hahaha! Yeah... Win10 doesn't work well for this it seems. "Windows, selling you stuff that does't work since well... it came out." or "We'll fix it in the next version!" MrBlackCat

Yes... they are relatively expensive ($14.99USD + $4.00 shipping) and often out of stock... for months at a time. That cable with shipping cost almost as much as I paid for most of my Flashbacks new... I was just looking for a less expensive alternative for a cable that should cost less than the shipping from AtGames. On a side note, my Knock-Off Sega Gopher (100 games version) came boxed, with USB Charge cable and Audio/Video cable for $22 shipped. MrBlackCat

Ok... I ran the tests. You used a cable with a yellow end, which is video, not audio, so that test doesn't support the idea of using audio cables for video. I have boxes of cables from 8mm diameter oxygen free shielded coax, to dollar tree stuff, and tried more than a dozen types. The way I tested this was simple... I used the original AtGames cable, which works fine of course. Then I unplugged the Video side/yellow and added each dedicated audio cable to pass the video signal through the audio cable. Also, I found two other 1/8 to RCA cable sets without a yellow, as they were intended for audio only. Both were wired identical to the AtGames set, and neither worked in the sense the video was extremely distorted/ghosted. Result, you might have an audio cable that was made using 75ohm wire, and it would work. There is no way to verify this without testing for signal with a dedicated testing device or oscilloscope, or by trying it. Most dedicated Audio cables will not pass a signal correctly. Simple. This is a case of how a given cable handles a signal, not just electricity. For this reason I am not going to suggest using dedicated audio cables unless you have one you can try. Basically, any correctly polarized 1/8 to RCA Audio/Video cable will work. And any correctly polarized 1/8 to RCA Audio only cable (white/white,red/white etc) may or may not work. If you have it to test, try it, but there is no guarantee an audio cable will work, as they can be different. MrBlackCat

I did that also for years... until recently. Now I shoot for a shorter, long-term... because times have changed. Take the PSP Go as the handheld that helped me see the writing on the wall. In a very short time, they will all be basically PSP Paperweight edition as they are completely dependent on download. Even on my PS3, XBox 360, PS Vita, PSP etc... there are games that are digital only. Support for those systems is soon gone. Gives me even greater appreciation for Cartridge systems... I can play them as long as I can maintain the hardware to do so... now more and more games are being made with a "Product Life Cycle". This is the down side to digital content for me. I have one of those... they are so interesting! Is like a portable, but with a normal controller. Really they kind of have all the disadvantages of both a console and a portable, but I still like mine. If only they had those when I was a kid in the back seat on a seemingly endless road trip. MrBlackCat

I just read a bit on the subject... seems cable intended for composite (and most video) is 75ohm cable. This will work fine for Audio or Video, but not the other way around. This matches my experience. If it is yellow, it was most likely intended for Video, and is 75ohm cable. Now I am curious... I have a number of dedicated video cables in many types. I will connect the video side of my correct cable through these and record the results. MrBlackCat

Excellent news. Thank you for sharing. I skipped the Wii U, so I will likely get a Switch shortly after release. In the small group of people I type/talk with about gaming, most felt we weren't shown enough difference between Wii U and original Wii to justify buying one. I really don't know if this is an actuality or poor marketing. OT, I hope side projects like the NES Classic Mini help with some guidance for Nintendo to see where they stand status wise and sales potential wise. I don't want to see them end up like Sega and Atari. MrBlackCat