Downland1983

Yep. I was only halfway caught up on the thread when I posted. Sorry about that.

Actually, in this statement, Warner Bros was very clear that "the complete game" is on the cartridge at time of purchase. So, yes, you can play it start to finish without an additional download: ​"Players who purchase a physical copy of LEGO City Undercover on Nintendo Switch at retail are getting the complete game, and do not need to download additional content to enjoy the full experience. An internet connection is not required to play the game. The only internet connection suggested is to download the typical content update patch." http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/03/warner_bros_issues_full_statement_regarding_lego_city_undercover_install_confusion

I bought this piece of trash for my dad when it came out. We used to play Snafu at my grandfather's house in the 80's. I remember being supremely pissed when this thing excluded the music, which is one of the best things about Snafu, and the main reason I bought it in the first place. I later got a working Intellivision off eBay, and am all the happier for it. I also got a Coleco Vision Flashback, but all that did was inspire me to get my actual Coleco Vision down from the attic and start playing the original carts again. So, while I have bought a couple of plug and play consoles in the past, they always lead me back to the original hardware. If you haven't ever seen this, please watch this Jon Tron video on bad Plug and Play systems. It is good for many, many, many laughs: https://youtu.be/jHepjitYJmM

I'm not surprised. I worked in retail for 13 years. When I got up into management, I remember being told that Baby Formula was becoming one of the most highly shoplifted items. We didn't keep more than one or two of each variety on the shelf at any given time. Just enough to show we had them in stock. If a customer wanted more they had to ask, and we would get it from "the cage" in the stock room. This article is from 3 years after I left retail, showing it to still be a huge problem in the U.S.: http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/crime/black-market-stolen-baby-formula/

Yep. And if it was a ticket for a large item like a Castle Grayskull playset or something, you had to go to the counter by the store to the stock room.

Christmas of 1988. I don't know where my parents got it. If I had to guess, I'd say Sears, Toys R Us, or JC Penney since that where my dad did most of his holiday shopping back then. I had already seen Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda on a friend's NES, so I wasn't enthralled by the 7800 by the time we got it. We played a lot of Pole Postion II on it. But once we got the NES for Christmas of 1989, that was the effectively the end of the 7800's usage in our household.

Except Pac-Man and ET were both HEAVILY returned by the consumers who bought those games back in the day. That's well documented, so it had nothing to do with a coloration of perception over time. I had a Coleco Vision in 1982, so I knew how good an arcade conversion look at home (Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., etc). We had the expansion module for playing 2600 games, and I remember enjoying playing Space Invaders, Combat and Kaboom! (our downstairs neighbors had this one). I didn't have E.T. personally, but I remember seeing it being played at my brother's friend's house. I distinctly remember watching E.T. constantly falling in holes, and I wanted nothing to do with that game.

TRS-80 Color Computer 2. I seem to recall the first program I successfully input on my own having to do with a Navajo Blanket graphic.

LOOPING (SKILL 2) - 40,830

LOOPING (SKILL 2) - 34,360

I don't dispute that. I was just reacting to the person saying that anyone who thinks Pac-Man 2600 sucks (which it does) is an *sshat.

Yep, all the more reason the original 2600 version is more than deserving of its bad reputation.

Yeah, I had heard that as well. Terrible shame. Would have loved to play Pac-Man at home on my ColecoVision back in the day. It was both. They cheaped out on a 4KB cartridge when 8KB was available but more expensive, and only allotted 4 months of development time so the game could release in time for the 1981 holiday season.

It gets the hate because Atari knowingly and willfully released it in its sorry state (even after Frank Ballouz from Atari's Coin Division warned Ray Kassar would not be well received) for their own 2600 system and 1 year later released a much, much better version on their own competitor's Intellivision system. Sorry, Atari doesn't get a pass from me for cutting corners (like using a 4KB cartridge when 8KB cartridges were available) to put out a cheap garbage port to meet their self-imposed holiday '81 deadline. There is no sense in you demonizing any one who dislikes something that several people in the very company who released it (including Ed Logg, a lead Atari designer, who called it a rushed and lousy effort) knew wouldn't be liked by the general public in the first place!

My younger brother and I got a 7800 for Christmas in 1988. I remember being somewhat disappointed playing it and Pole Position II after having seen and played games like the Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros on other people's NES'. We were ecstatic to get an NES for Christmas the following year. Poor timing. We probably would have appreciated it more in 1984 when it was originally supposed to launch.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that sales of Breath of the Wild were skewing 80% Switch to 20% Wii U.

I find that having 500 GB of storage on Xbox One is not much better than having 32 GB on a Wii U or Switch. The Xbox One downloads the full games into internal storage even if you own the physical disk for crying out loud! I found that by the time I owned 6 games for Xbox One, I had to go out and buy a 2TB external drive just so that I wouldn't have to delete physical games I owned out of the storage space in order to play other games. At least the physical games on Wii U & Switch don't eat up any internal storage apart from save files or updates. Also, I am not enthralled by cloud saves for game files. Nothing is more annoying to me than popping Dragon Age Inquisition into my Xbox One only to be told "Cloud Storage Save File Cannot Be Accessed At This Time. Please Try Again Later". This has happened more than once. It's nice as a back-up, sure. But when it flat out tells you it can't pull up your save file at the exact moment you want it, come back later, that's not a superior means of save file storage to me.

Looping - 22,940 Slight improvement for me. On the plus side, this is the 1st time I've ever made it to the end of the first flight screen.

No offense, but I don't know how the Speccy caught on anywhere with that color palette (regardless of price point), especially where the color of your character changes with each background you pass through. It would have been jarring to me to play a game like that. Maybe, it's because I didn't experience it 1st hand back in the day.

Looping - 20,630 I had Looping as a kid, but was never any good at it. I'll see if I can keep improving on this.