Cootster

Didn't make it to North America, either. Sweet little collection, and I'm surprised that it hasn't been redone with a non-Japanese license for the rest of the world. . .

Well, I remember playing the holy heck out of on the NES when that port first came out . . . I think it got love more because the events were unique than because it was actually good, though. And the Domo-Kun game for GBA has a sumo mini-game which is pretty fun, so someone has attempted it again. Much better than the fish-herding mini-game, which has frustrated me for months.

If only Plimpton had gotten Sidd Finch to appear in the INTV campaign, they may have kicked Atari's ass. Alan Alda did commercials for the 8-bits? I don't imagine he came cheap since that would have been right at the end of MASH. . . Of course, it wouldn't work today. Imagine the guy who plays Grissom on CSI doing an ad for Halo 2 "With Halo 2's wide variety of weapons, you have the opportunity and motive to kill your friends in online play. It's disappointing that you can't watch bugs lay eggs in the wound later, though".

Yes you're right. I swear I read somewhere that Gremlin did, but KLOV says it's Konami. BTW did you know there was a sequel to Frogger? http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_i...d=9310&letter=R Tempest Sounds more like a highly expanded sequel to Mattel's Frog Bog than one to Frogger, really. Is it MAME-compatible?

It's an Avalon Hill game, not CommaVid.

Between 40-50$ loose, which is what the one I sold went for in early '03 and what the others I've seen went for. Sweet little game, too. Although it really should use the paddle a la Yar's, IMO.

For all the hate Zaxxon gets for not being pixel-perfect, it's still way better than Desert Falcon because you can actually tell when you're about to collide with something. DF 2600 would be so much better as a straight top-down game where you could use the powerups before you take cheap hits from immobile objects. The 7800 version is OK, though. Was it ever going to be an arcade game?

Coolness. Can't wait to get mine, plug it in, and play Cyplix on the real thing. But which one would I and Crimefighter get? I'm confused. . . Doesn't matter to me, I dig both labels. Just not sure how this is working,

No, it was Secret Quest in 1990. In the US, anyway. . . I think HES' My Golf came out in '94 in Australia, making it the last non-homebrew game anywhere. When were Oystron and This Planet Sucks originally released? I know I was playing them on emu in '96. . . Did the homebrew scene actually co-exist with commercial sales at some point?

Not to mention the Mattel/INTV Intellivision (1979-1987).

early 2004. And you forgot the RCA Studio II (1976-1979), Bally Astrocade (1978-1982), Emerson Arcadia 2001 (1982-1984), and the PS1 (1994-2004).

Well, it is a bit dodgy, but the CV port of Pac-Man hadn't came out yet, right? So, the 2600 version was in fact the only licensed Pac-Man for the system. Which is how they were able to get away with it, I'd imagine.

Very awesome indeed . . . Sure, it's not exactly the most complicated game ever, but this just makes it look so much better to me . . .

All but 4 (soon to be 5) of my hundred-odd 2600 games are wild . . . Over half of them were purchased pre-90 NIB. All the NES stuff is wild, and all the NTSC Genesis stuff (wild PAL-only MegaDrive stuff doesn't exist in AL.) . . . Pretty much every CV item I have except for Lady Bug and Baseball was an online purchase. I generally just don't buy games/systems on eBay. . . The thrill of the hunt just isn't there.

I read a very old interview in which Tim Skelly (Star Castle, Reactor, etc) opind that a big part of video game magic was that black background, which allowed the other graphics to look brighter and more interesting by comparison. It is amazing that games were released with some of the color schemes that were used. The games look much better with black backgrounds. There so needs to be a black-background hack for Video Olympics . . . Pong just doesn't look right with low-contrast colors . . .

Judging by the games on it, that particular one must have been used in Sears. . . And #44 was probably supposed to be Stellar Track. Neat, wouldn't mind having one, even if it is huge.

Nobody mentions that HSW and Will Wright also got in the Onion this week? AFAIK, this is the first time anyone in gaming has done an interview with the AV Club, although I could be wrong . . . And Wil's column definitely rocks. . . Someone ought to clue him in to the homebrew scene if he's not already a good AA customer, which wouldn't surprise me. . .

The SMS palette, from looking at it on the palette viewer on Meka, seems to be 64 out of 256 . . . Some games (Sonic Spinball comes to mind first) do a lot of rapid switching to achieve effects . . . People have attempted converters to play GG games on the SMS and the result haven't been pretty . . .

The high levels of Crackpots and Beamrider are at least as fast as Kaboom, IMO . . . Of course, technically, they're all 60Hz(NTSC) or 50Hz(PAL) But Activision games just look faster . . . Maybe it's the striped logo?

Wouldn't the Japanese cart say 2800 on it as the box does? hugged's cart says 2600. Of course, given the horrid Atari quality control, that may mean nothing and it is a Japanese version. It'd be NTSC anyway, no way to tell . . .

Actually, does any game that was originally released in silver have a red label (NTSC, anyway)? I thought the red labels were only used on new titles, black-label originals, and the former Coleco/PB titles. Silver-label originals (Moon Patrol, ET, Vanguard, etc.) got gray labels. . . I have that c-1988 Vanguard cart, but no box/manual. The other two I've mentioned were definitely bought in a red box and are gray labels.

That's not a red label . . . red BOX, yes, but the label's clearly silver/gray . . .

Well, a 2600 Y-cable wouldn't have any uses, and I assume you mean that the end that plugs into the system doesn't accept the additional CV pinouts, only left, right, up, down, and fire . . . Were there C64 or Atari 8-bit games that allowed for such a device? That'd be my guess as to what a "2600-only" Y-cable would be used for. . . No experience with them, though, I actually like the doorknob controller . . .

Eh, CPU's right . . . I've always liked to think it was Froggo's attempt at using the power of Suck Processing to make their games even more awful, though.

Someone here (Rob Mitchell???) hacked a DB-9 port onto the original Namco stick to add 8-way motion. . . Haven't heard about any others. My guess is nobody wants to bother with the cheap pieces of crap.