mr_me

Part number and revision will be at the bottom of the back cover.

What catalog revision was in the box?

106640

Mcrew is right, 95%+ of Amico customers won't care how well it emulates an intellivision controller. And there's no reason to worry about how old earthworm jim can be emulated with an amico controller. The new eartworm jim and all Amico games will be designed to work well with the Amico controller. I can see some things being gimicky. Take the dice roll demo for example, it might get people's attention but after a while won't it be easier to just push a button. They could also do motion control really well and really enhance gameplay, better than the Wii did.

Yeah, Dreadnaught Factor and Beamrider are original Intellivision games. On an Atari 800, it's harder to do horizontal scrolling than vertical scrolling. I've never played that version but other than orientation the gameplay could be faithfull to the original intellivision version. The dreadnaught designs look identical. Activision was founded by Atari guys. Imagic was founded by both Mattel and Atari guys and game development for both systems were very much seperate at Imagic.

In Activision's case it was their policy not to introduce new features in their intellivision conversions of their atari cartridges. I heard they weren't happy that you could fly over land in intellivision river raid. Bad policy in those days since systems were so technically different. When Mattel did their conversions to the atari 2600 they even changed the titles, recognising they are different games.

I think the only surprises to come with the controller are how the different features might be used in games. Technically speaking we probably already know what it is. Regarding the game demos so far, it's obviously too early to draw conclusions. There will be thirty to forty games at launch, only a fraction will be retro titles. While every game will be multiplayer with both coop and versus modes where possible, I don't think you can forget about single player game play.

I'd say it's the adlib sound card in the late 1980s. Unless you had Tandy audio, pc games sounded terrible before that. In the early 1980s PC's had composite video and the colours for many games looked quite good if it was used. Then games were written for ega and tandy graphics, prior to vga, which isn't bad but not great. By the later 1980s most people had monochrome graphics and displays anyway but some splurged for vga. I'd say it's around 1988 when ms-dos gaming really took off. There were good 3D flight, driving, and sports games on ms-dos between 1988 and 1991. It was also around 1988 that PC sales really took off. Of course there were good ms-dos games before 1988 too. Edit: Note that it's hard to emulate cga composite graphics, so those early games won't look good with a four colour digital palette.

If the flex-circuit looks to be in decent shape the controller should be fixable. I'd check each wire for continuity; with the original it's the last wire on the connector that signals that keypad column. And I'd check all 16 disc directions to determine the disc is functioning. If one of the wires is bad, a new flex-circuit won't fix it.

If the first column of the keypad is not working that should also mean two of three side buttons don't work because they share the same circuit/pin.

Don't you have to continue to hold the fire button until the firmware is transferred?

Emulation can be a disadvantage. I had missed collisions with Vectron and switched to real hardware for my best scores. My locknchase score was done in mame with an intellivision controller. I might have to switch to real hardware to beat it.

You should always disclose the use of emulation or alternate controllers in competition. I used the gravis to cross-map the right/left controls; like a dual action intellivision controller. The amico controller can be cross-mapped too.

I got my personal best Night Stalker score using a Gravis gamepad.

All someone has to do is create a silicone overlay for the touchscreen, duplicating the tactile feel of the original controller. That still leaves the awkward location of the side/shoulder buttons for games that use two action buttons.