Keatah

Love it!

What is your favorite 16-bit paint program? This could be for the Mac, Atari ST, or Amiga.

That's funny. Already this thread has Coleco Chameleon overtones and it isn't even a page long.

The physical thing. The real thing. ..Can only be had from the likes of ebay or craigslist. Nobody is making new C64s today that I'm aware of.

More value to me unmodded. I like to do the work myself, and it becomes a special project for me then. And I know it'll be done correctly with pro-level work.

It is. The big N can stamp these out like McDonald's french fries. There's nothing but a plastic shell, a wire or two, and a tiny R-Pi sized SoC board.

I think it's great, absolutely fantastic, that people are becoming more impressed with emulation and the sharpness achieved when working entirely in the digital domain. Totally disposing of Analog/RF/Composite/CRT altogether.

Chess came out because of a lawsuit. A guy purchased a VCS, and there was a chess symbol on the box. But no chess game in the catalog. A lawsuit for false advertising ensued. Later, Atari developed VideoChess. A chess game with graphics was thought not possible in the limited space of a VCS ROM, at the time. I'm pretty sure bank switching was "invented" for making this game possible. But yet, the game never used the technique.

Are mfgs of these consoles beginning to use some sort of protocol and pinout that isn't actually USB? I mean just using the connector because it's a connector?

The most "famous" and well-known incident is the one on VCS console carton, the chess game..

We rarely trust any reviewer's opinions. Too much possibility of bias. The best source of information is in forums.

I think SD and HDMI are two features that will HAVE TO BE on all of these little "flashback" class machines going forward.

Heh.. I remember the was a lot of hoopla and all that surrounding the game. And us little kids were practically made to believe VCS Pac-Man was state-of-the-art and and was actually very very good. Accurate & fun. Though I never got into Pac-Man anything other than dabbling with a few far more accurate clones from like H.A.L. labs & Atarisoft on the Apple II. But it did serve to increase the contrast between home and arcade. It gave more meaning to the words true arcade. So when I got a whiff of ColecoVision and the arcade experience I was blown away. For a while.

Maybe there could be multiple folders: Space Games Submarine Games Shooters .. A directory tree!

How much of the nes-mini buzz is spilling from the niche of retrogaming into the general public?

Well what is the definition of "failed" here?

I'd throw in a few TRS-80 Pocket Computer stories and ruminations, but the lineup wasn't a failure. It was a vertical niche market.

It's great to see the demand for better picture quality go up. Eventually we'll get to emulator levels.

Love the long names, they provide extra information not easily found elsewhere.

That's right, I clearly recall doing certain google searches 10 years ago and receiving result X. Today I conduct the same search but receive result Y. Something vastly different. And often not even remotely related to what I was after in the first place. Google searches tend to return popular things and stuff that is likely to generate as many future clicks as possible. A trend that has been accelerating for a good number of years.

Well, it looks like we'll get some of these portables for giveaways at our winter bash. Assuming they're available when we go to order them. And perhaps the nes-mini. They're priced right and go back to the earliest games, in portable format - which reminds me.. When I was a kid, I remember getting the VCS and a b/w television. A 9" or 12" portable from JC Penny's. the one where the lead-acid batteries' tray screwed into the bottom. I could barely lift the damned thing. And it way cool to put this TV set in the back of the old Chevy and bring my VCS along on road trips. The TV worked for 4 hours on a full charge, and I just wired up a couple of 9V batteries for the VCS. Later I used simple cigarette lighter adapters for power. One directly to the TV. And one going through a resistor to the VCS. This one always got real hot and we had to be careful where we put it. One time it burned a small hole in the vinyl upholstery. But that wasn't as bad as when I taped the timer in the on position for my Cox/Sanwa RC car. It was supposed to charge for 20 minutes. But I wanted a little extra charge in it. I planned to come back in 30 minutes. Well I came back an hour later to a car full of this white choking smoke and the battery having melted itself through the seat. Well, being a shit-faced little kid, it took me like an hour to drag all this stuff out and get it set up in the back seat. Joysticks, wires, adapters, switch box, TV, VCS, paddles, 50 cartridges, instructions. Screwdriver and tape to help get it all set up. Practically my whole videogame collection at the time. But it worked! By golly jesus. IT WORKED! I had real mobile gaming. 70's style.

What's even more amazing is that the atgames website seems to follow a different graphic design language and layout. It's getting further away from that same old harsh millennial metro garbagey look everyone seems hellbent on copying for the past 5 years.

Ripping it would be pointless, wouldn't it? Because it's not VCS game code. Right? It is native to the SoC used in the console?

Where does the Apple II stuff on ebay come from? From sellers, duhh! But where do they get it from? I'm seeing more and more old men die off, and some formerly had mom'n'pop computer stores in the 80's, and they took all their inventory and put it in storage or in their garage. So Apple II material is coming from dead people's estates more and more frequently. And I bet the market is going to be flooded with this stuff. There'll be enough to go around for years to come. And then there's the 70's hobbyist. It's about time for them to keel over, thus flooding the market. Some notables already kicked the bucket. With this in mind I think there is little or no reason to pay the high prices being asked. I'm seeing a steady uptick in the amount of material currently available and first coming onto the market.