Danno

Quick note - I submitted Ken's MESS changes to the MESSDevs. Bletch is going to clean a few thingsd up and add it as an official patch.

They aren't selling well. They had piles of them at my local Best Buy up until Christmas, and very few had sold. I went to BB yesterday and the pile was gone. I asked the salesman where they went and he said "we pulled 'em off the floor to reprice some and ship most of them back. They weren't selling."

After adding Ken's updated MESS 7800 code, here's the results of testing: The timing in One on One is still wrong. The game/shot clock runs WAAAY too fast. Kung Fu master is still a garbled MESS (lol). Xevious appears to be updating the screen improperly (flickering, and sputtering sound). Summer Games and Winter Games are a garbage with the update now, sound is fine, but graphics are garbled. Xenophobe still has flicker/graphic corruption problems, but during in-game it's less annoying that it was previously. Everything else apprears normal. Maybe what Ken has attempted could be a clue to fixing most/all of these problems?

Indeed it is much smaller. the compiled executable zips down to 5.8 megs, but I can't post it here. Too large still. I keep getting the error page telling me it's not a proper zip file.

Nevermind. I didn't realize the Console View of EMU7800 actually gives you the md5 of every unrecognized rom in the roms folder. Cool. Damn this game rocks, Ken.

Ok - Crossbow - I've been trying to get it running in EMU7800 all morning. It won't even show up in the list. I added the info from that post on page 5 of this thread to the romproperties.csv, but still no dice. What am I doing wrong?

Ken - I know we're all anxiously awaiting the arrival of this one on Cart - but since very few of us have a Cuttle Cart 2 - Is there anyway to make this one not play INSANELY FAST in MESS? I mean even on "easy" I get wiped out in under 2 seconds. Is there a setting I can set to make it run at a reasonable speed?

exactly.

There are two atari 2600 compatible trackballs. The CX-22 and teh CX-80. Ther are essentially the same, except that the fire buttons onthe cx-80 are slightly improved because the ones on the cx-22 broke rather easily. Also the Cx-22 has a white ball, and the CX-80's ball is black. As far as compatibility, both of them have Joystick simulated mode, and true trackball mode. Atari never made any games for the 2600 that were compatible with true trackball mode, although there is a hack of Missle Command that is compatible with it that Atari sells. even still, using either one in joystick simulated mode is pretty darn good, especially for games that used a trackball in the arcade, like crystal castles and millipede. You can also re-wire a 2600 trackball to the circuit board of a microsoft serial mouse and use it as a real trackball in things like MAME. but that is another story...

Exactly right, Zylon. It is simply a port, and neither a simulation nor an emulation. Just software ported to a different hardware platform. Just because GTA: San Andreas was released for the PS2 first doesn't mean the X-Box version is emulating the PS2 version. It's just a port. Same base game code, rewritten to work on different hardware.

I post at plenty of other message boards, and I know tons of forum trolls who have thousands of posts to their credit. Longevity and/or a high post count really means nothing on the internet, other than persistence. I'm not saying Gunstar is a troll, because he's not. I'm just making a point. If Gunstar's ok in everyone here's book, then fine, I was wrong. But I wasn't looking at his post count when I read his posts. I was looking at the fact that he was posting his auction all over the AA forums, so when I clicked on the links to ebay, I expected to see great pictures and a detailed description indicating the condition of his "collectors items" 7800 games. There weren't any there. That threw up a red flag in my book. Maybe it's also because I just got hosed on Ebay by a guy who advertised a 7800 system, but wasn't really planning on selling anything, and just wanted a temporary cash loan. Kinda makes your trigger finger a little itchy. Like I said - Gunstar I hope your sales go well. For what it's worth - I apologize.

And I've been on the internet since 1978. You have no idea how a comment like yours feels when you are forced to sell precious items of your collection to get by. I don't? I'm glad you know me better than I know myself. What on earth was I thinking.

Been registered here since February. Been lurking for years. Hardly a newbie. As far as ignoring me, fine. Gunstar's ebay's may well be 100% legitimate. That's fine. But anyone who posts their ebay auctions in multiple threads and multiple forums, and claims desperation for cash is usually someone to avoid. I hope your sales go well gunstar.

Cry me a river. I've seen people get ripped off, or nearly ripped off on ebay a million times. Just last week I won a bid on an Atari 7800, but the guy selling it got cold feet when I asked him why the Fedex tracking number he gave me didn't show up in the system for 5 days. Thankfully he refunded my paypal. I assumed he simply needed a small loan for a few days. Yes, we've all seen pictures of atari carts. But we can also tell the difference if it's one you posted, or one you stole from an Atari website. Not having one leads people to believe that you don't really have the products. and your reputation is 98%, not 100%. and almost all of your reps are for buying things from other people, and not for selling things.

posting ebay auctions in multiple forums (i.e. spamming) is bad enough, but none of those auctions even have pictures. lame.

removed from above:

Has anyone else noticed that the screenshots they lifted from Atariage aren't even 100% accurate to the originals or to the Flashback's versions? They're M.E.S.S. screenshots. By not 100% accurate I mean that the 7800 Centipede screenshot is NOT how the original game looks, nor how it looks on the Flashback. On the 7800, the playfield was surrounded by a white Box, but in M.E.S.S emulation, the line at the top of the white box is displayed incorrectly, not as white, but as a dashed green line. Hilarious. They can't even get accurate screenshots of their "intellectual property". Original 7800 Centipede: Flashback/M.E.S.S. version:

Any Idea what the price will be, so I know how much to set aside?

Are Beef Drop 7800 carts going to be made?

Do PAL 7800 carts work on NTSC 7800 consoles? I wann get a PAL Impossible Mission, so I can finish it, but I don't want to buy it if it won't run.

I wouldn't worry about the flashback ruining the "hobby" as it were.... The "hobby" of classic gaming and emulation as you refer to it isn't in any danger for those in the know and for those that don't, we can only try to educate them. If they don't want to listen, so be it. There's nothing worse than 100s of uninvited, loud, obnoxious, Johnny-Come-Lately party crashers killing and otherwise good healthy buzz anyhow. If they want to learn, or truly rediscover classic games, they'll find us, just as we found our ways here. and if they're just following the stupid "retro-junk" trend like Atarigrames, Jaxx, and other exploiters of people's revisionist history and semi-forgotten nostalgia, then eventually their fire will die out in this universe. Atari 2004 = George Lucas & the "Special Editions".

That's funny, I went to both Best Buy and Circuit City this past weekend, looking for other things, and they had Piles and Piles of Flashback units. Best Buy probably had 300 on the Floor, and who knows how many in the back. My wife even asked me if I wanted one. I told her it was a piece of crap, and it's not the real thing, and that the emulators I play on the computer were 1000% more accurate that this thing...Three other customers turned and looked at me and said "Really?" I said - "yep, it's not a realy Atari, it's a copycat toy company who bought the use of the name, and stuck it on a piece of crap toy for Christmas. The games don't look, sound or play anything like the originals. That's why they have piles of them, and can't sell 'em. The word is out." The salesperson at Best Buy didn't like that too much. I asked him how much commision he made on returns, because he's going to see a lot of them. He asked me to browse for something else. and to stop "bothering" the customers. I promptly put down the $200 woth of merchandise I was going to buy, and told him, it's obvious Circuit City would rather have my money. I then asked him if his manager would like to know how well his sales pitch worked. Needless to say he quickly turned and walked away, no doubt hoping I didn't read the name on his nametag. I figure his worrying about it is more painful than actually telling his boss anything....

apparently you missed the part of my post where I said "I'm clueless". about this stuff.

I just got one as well. There are Two Atari Trackball models, the CX-22 and the CX-80. I don't know that there are major differences besides cosmetics. They BOTH have a switch for joystick/trackball mode. What I'd like to find is a way to use the CX-80 I just bought in "trackball mode" as a mouse on the PC, so I can use it in MAME and MESS. I suppose you'd have to build an adaptor to PS/2 or USB to make it work, but I'm clue less with that stuff. Anyone?

I had - a Coleco Gemini because Donkey Kong was a much better pack-in game than the awful 2600 Pac-Man. Unfortunately, the soldering on the controller ports to the circuit board went after several years of abuse, and we chucked it. I then got a 7800 in 1986, and most of the games for it. I loved that system. I had about 150 games between 7800's and 2600's. Then, In 1987, my priorities changed and I started playing guitar instead of Atari. By 1991, I had been in several bands and was now in a punk band. We smashed the 7800 and the cartridges (a-la The Clash) in the parking lot of the Rehersal studio where we practiced one night in a drunken Punk Rock stupor. Now I run a recording studio, and am an avid Atari PC Emulation fan. Certain members of the band who smashed my 7800 with me went on to fame and fortune.