Playing Atari in the stores when you were a kid...

[Playing Atari in the stores when you were a kid...]

I remember them being in my hometown Wal-Mart (at the time recently converted from a Kuhn's Big K, which is how Walmart entered many Southeastern markets) and Howard Bros. (where Mom and Dad bought my 2600 when I was 4).  The treat was going to the nearest mall and Hill's, which was an hour away, in particular Sears and Circus World Toys.   

[Do you have a fav PC gaming brand/ecosphere?]

I'm partial to ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards, Nvidia video, and Corsair cooling.

 

Back in the mid-late 90's when I worked in tech before getting into teaching technology, I preferred Rendition video cards and Aureal A3D sound, since many of the Papyrus racing sims utilized them. I wish someone would find out a way to make a Rendition Verite wrapper, then I can play SODA Off Road in it's best state!

[Currently Playing / About to Start.. ?]

Finally got time to get my old PS2 Logitech GT Force Pro set up with DriveHub, so I've been tinkering with Project CARS, Forza 5 and Forza Horizon 3. I'm thinking about getting Project CARS 2 or Dirt Rally 2.0 or NASCAR Heat 3, since I loved Dirt 2 Daytona and the addition of dirt track racing.

[What's the one bit of tech that made you say, YESS!]

Rendition Verite 2. Almost every sim racer had one, as most of the Papyrus sims exclusively supported it for 3d graphics. I knew after firing up classics like NASCAR Racing 2 and SODA Off Road that PC gaming would never be the same!

Aureal 3D sound. Like the Rendition, Papyrus sims also supported A3D. With a 5:1 speaker system, being able to hear a car on your quarter panel was amazing!

[N. A. P. Consumer Electronics Company?]

Yep, North American Philips, later Philips Consumer Electronics. Their former headquarters were just outside of Knoxville, off I-40 exit 396 in Strawberry Plains. The old sign still overlooking I-40 East still shows the labelscar from those days.

[Phil Nixon Interview - Power Drive Rally Artist - Rage & Sumo Digital]

Funny, just bought Power Drive Rally today! Cart only, but cant go wrong for 2 dollars! Very nice game.

You got a great deal! PDR is an awesome game!

[Fallen Angels]

Finally found an old enough CD-R drive to burn this to. Wow! Beautiful game! and fun too!

 

Great job!

[Creative solutions to rehousing pcbs... Anyone else have to get creative?]

shame you had to swap an uncommon great like solaris for dk jr. the common shells with sliding dust covers will also fit the pcbs. traimel era 2600 carts used the same redesigned shells as 7800. i also had a few games with one prong broke off that function fine in my 4-switch woody.

I have a good, working Solaris, and in better condition! the one I swapped was dead, wouldn't work and was in rough shape. The DKJr. cart had also seen better days.

 

Believe me, I would have NEVER swapped a good Solaris. Solaris is my favorite 2600 game! And yes, I do like DKJr. from time to time.

[Creative solutions to rehousing pcbs... Anyone else have to get creative?]

I had a Donkey Kong Junior (red label) with a broken tab, making it near impossible to insert into my composite modified six switcher. I had a Solaris that didn't work, cleaning and other measures couldn't bring it back to life. So I swapped the Solaris board with the DKJr. First time I every took a cart apart, which was hard for me to believe considering the way I like to tinker.

 

Good job rescuing your games, Gorfcadet!

[Had some fun playing StarWars Arcade with LeStick on a flight yoke]

Awesome!

 

Sadly, my Star Wars Arcade cart doesn't work, tried cleaning and all

[Yet another light sixer restoration]

Beautiful!

 

I like your techniques. I'm restoring a light sixer too! I added the appropriate zener diodes to the joystick caps and am going to make antistatic covers for the switches, since the RIOT had to be replaced. I got the composite mod, but I'm going to keep the parts I remove so it can be reversible, including not cutting on the case.

 

Keep up the good work!

[The Raspberry Pi and Retropie discussion thread]

I bought an RP3 Model B at a "local" (closest an hour away) Target last weekend. Got Retropie running, and decided to delved into cramming it into a Atari Flashback 1 Mini 7800 case. Going to go with USB right now instead of 9 pin controller ports, I tried to get the Mini 7800 sticks working with GPIO with no success, and I would be limited anyway. I'll probably buy a 2600daptor to use real Atari controllers and my old trusty Xbox360 controllers. I have successfully gotten the difficulty, select, pause, and reset buttons to work via GPIO! Got to get a few more parts together and working before I get the drill and Dremel out. I've wanted one of these for a while, so glad I finally got one!

[The Test Drive series on the PS1 and PS2-any good games?..]

Test Drive: LeMans 24 Hours is awesome! I played it to death on the Dreamcast, then got it for the PS2. Very fun game.

[JI Nostalgia]

I posted there regularly beginning around 1997. I still have my collection, though right now boxed up in storage. I'm glad to see many JI posters here.

[I just beat Troy Aikman NFL Football]

I had the SNES version when it first came out, before I owned a Jaguar. When I was in high school (ca. 1993-4) I used to waste time dreaming up plays on notebook paper to try in the play editor.

 

I enjoyed the SNES version, and IMHO some of the music and sounds are a little better. But I like the improved graphics, bigger sprites, and overall feel of the Jaguar version. I played two seasons, one in which I won with the Cowboys, and one with the Bengals in which I came up short in the Super Bowl. Getting the Bengals there was a real challenge!

[Lost my RPG Virginity Today (and a question)]

Thanks for the suggestions folks! I have noticed that it seems too easy in FF1 to win some battles, especially after watching my best friend back in the day play FF (I always watched, I never played). Anyway I'll keep the suggestions in mind.

 

Thanks

cuda man

[Lost my RPG Virginity Today (and a question)]

Hey

 

Yeah, I lost my RPG "virginity" today LOL!

 

I've alway been a action gaming kinda guy. Today I dusted my Gameboy Advance off, which I hadn't played in over a year. I decided to get some new games. At my local shop there was a copy of Final Fantasy 1 & 2: Dawn of Souls. I decided to take the risk and play an RPG. Boy, after the first battle I won in FF 1 I never felt so good! I don't know why I hadn't tried them earlier, there's more to them that what I had thought.

 

Anyway I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for other RPGs along the same lines. I'm going to try to play through the FF games now that I am hooked, but would like to try some others.

 

Sometimes, change is good!

Mike

[What sort of games do Jag Fans want?]

I always wanted to see a sprite-based racer similar to Super Burnout only with vehicles with four wheels, mainly sports cars, and damage, tire wear, fuel, stuff like that. Sorta like Test Drive LeMans with sprite-based graphics.

 

That would rock! If anyone ever starts work on a Jag racing game give me a holler, I could help with beta testing

[What OTHER SNES games were ported to the GBA?]

The Madden NFL games 2002, 2003, and 2004 were ports of the SNES Maddens.

[In-car VCS]

I've pondered doing something like that one of these days, one of my goals in life is to build an Atari-themed Kustom car

 

I've got some ideals in my head, one of these days I'd like to start putting them together.

[Pis_ing on GameStop]

Back in the pre-Gamestop days (Software Etc.), I had a dispute with two employees when they tried to tell me that the copy of Ultimate Doom I was buying off the clearance shelf wasn't compatible with Windows 98. Myself and the cashier went back and forth till another co-worker came over to back him up in his argument. After I told them I still wanted to buy it the cashier then took a look at the system requirements on the other PC game I was buying to see if it was compatible before ringing it up.

 

I had a couple of bad experiences at that Gamestop, though they have improved, especially after EB moved in just down the road

[Your Fake Covers]

All of those are pretty cool.

 

Here's my fake box. It's a shame Atari didn't make an effort to get the rights to this back in '94-'95.

 

[The Crash]

But as a kid I loved the aftermath.  I still have DREAMS about the front of KayBee Toys in our mall, where all the Atari games were stacked up, 2 for $1.  Every week I got an allowance of $2 and would go buy 4 new games.  That Christmas I got something like 50 new carts.  I loved it.

 

I can remember Mom and I stopping at every Revco Drug Store (now CVS) in our town when I went to town with her. During that time there were 4 Revcos here and I pretty much racked out on Atari 2600 games. They hard huge piles of games at every store. The bulk of my first Atari 2600 library consisted of games bought at Revco stores.

[EA sports Football games]

I was thinking the same thing after playing John Madden Football for the 3DO, which was basically Genesis Madden 93 with video and fancy graphics and sound. It's a shame that EA didn't make an updated Madden game for the 3DO.

 

I've got Madden 2005 for the Gameboy Advance and it is much improved over the previous versions, which was nothing more that SNES Madden '95, especially the poor secondary when the defenders would stop running when the ball was passed (Madden '96 has a better defensive AI on the SNES).

 

The new editions are nice, but sometimes I find myself dusting off the old Genesis or now 3DO and playing the older versions.

[Acclaim almost dead! Thank god!!!!!]

I don't think Sierra is in too bad shape right now.  I have a friend who  

works there and he seems to think things have picked up quite a  

bit.   Last year was evidently worse.  I would guess mismanagement,

bad luck, and reliance on a few hit games to subsidize all the rest

(a risky, but common strategy) may account for the troubles of a few  

companies.  The industry as a whole seems fine.

 

--The Eidolon

 

Papyrus Design Group, Sierra's racing simulation developer best known for the NASCAR Racing series, IndyCar/Cart Racing Series, and the masterpiece Grand Prix Legends recently shut down. One of the main reasons was Sierra losing it's NASCAR license to EA Sports who got a 7-year exclusive license to produce NASCAR games. It was a real shame too. Papyrus' NASCAR Racing and Hasbro/Infogrames/Atari's NASCAR Heat games much better that EA's NASCAR Thunder series IMHO.

 

As for Acclaim I remember some of the stunts they pull in 1997 concerning the development and release of NFL Quarterback Club '98 for the Nintendo 64. First, they released doctored screenshots, making the game appear to have good lighting effects, though the finished product had horrible lighting effects. Then at release time some Acclaim employees, using Hotmail addresses started hanging around the Nintendo newsgroups posing as N64 gamers proclaiming how much better QBC98 was over Madden 64, though the exact opposite was true (though to their credit a good number of gamers and game publications bought in to their hype, I was even mocked by some of my N64 friends for liking Madden better that QBC). QBC99 was improved, though somehow they let the game get out with the amout of AI bugs it had. Those two games led me to lose faith in Acclaim.