alex.james

Thanks, all good now

Just want to say firstly how excellent this conversion has been done, absolutely love it! At first I was playing it via emulation with stella but the other day put it on a harmony cart. It runs off the cart but using the same ROM (the latest PAL one) on the real hardware results in some of the sounds missing (the whistles that accompany gameplay for example). It seems very strange I know, but is this a known problem between this game and some versions of harmony (mine is at least 7 years old I think), or could there be a issue with my console?

Not just Europe, Australia too. Always assumed the NES was a bit of flop until the internet era and learning about its success in the USA.

It's the late 80s in Australia and as a kid I was starting to take an interest in perusing the video games sections of stores like Kmart, Target and Big W etc. It's when I first noticed the 2600 to any decent degree. Having a C64 at home I noticed that some of the games that I had for that and liked to play such as Double Dragon, Commando, Hero, Rampage, Ghostbusters etc were being sold on the 2600. I looked at the boxes and the screenshots and was rather shocked at how graphically poor the games looked. I also noticed that the 2600 versions of these games were a lot cheaper than on the other systems. In my childlike naivety I believed that the 2600 was a poor people's game console. I thought it was a game system made for a price for the low end of the market and that's why the games looked like they did. The penny only finally dropped about a year later when my dad and I went into a local pawnbroker. In the shop I saw an early model woody VCS and some Atari carts for sale including the modern titles I had seen in the retail stores. Until then I had only seen the Jr model and that looked modern. Seeing the older 1970s model is when I first realised that actually this system is freaking old and that's why it was so less powerful than everything else on the market at the time. Anyways got myself my first Atari shortly after in '91 and enjoyed it ever since.

I didn't have a 2600 until 1991 when I was 11 and asked for one for Christmas. The family already by that stage owned a C64, Sega Master System and an Amiga 500. It was bought new from the store and the reason I wanted it was because here in Australia that final model of the Jr that Atari released had the 128 games built in. I knew going in that the games were primitive compared to what I already had. The fact that there was so many of them for free and the consoles were cheap made it worth it, even in the "NES years"

Never would have thought such a thing possible. Amazing...

So Ghostbusters 2, acid drop, pick n pile etc are not official releases just because Europe got them in the early 90s but NTSC zones didn't?

Here in Australia I reckon they sold almost no 7800s. The 8 bit console of that generation that sold like crazy here was the Master System. In 25 years of game collecting have only ever seen one 7800 for sale in the wild and that one was missing its power supply. Would have come across literally many hundreds of 2600s in that time. I wound up paying over $200 off another collector to get my 7800. That's cheaper than eBay generally is here so was happy with paying that.

It's just a fantastic game - Double Dragon for the 2600. Unlike other DD games it takes some effort to figure it out. People who don't like it I feel are that way because it's not like other versions of the game where you can just walk up to an enemy & bash them with no effort. I'm an absolute Double Dragon nut, that's why I put the effort in to figuring out how to beat it in the first place & the satisfaction is well worth it. It has tons more replay value than any other DD game including the Arcade. The guy who programmed this given the 2600's capabilities is a freakin genius. Whenever I show people the Atari I always show them some of the early games & then compare them with how much they milked the system to be able to get a game like Double Dragon out of it. Rampage on the other hand I'd have to say is a pretty awful conversion & way to easy. They could have done a lot better with that. Road Runner I reckon is the opposite - excellent game but too hard for me.

Rheffera, I'm in Adelaide too - check out the Cash Converters at Glynde. I was in there on the weekend & someone had just sold off a huge stack of Atari 2600 games. They were not especially rare titles but they were all near mint ie all in really crisp new looking boxes. Definately the best condition I have ever seen second hand. I think they were $5 each & they had about 25 - 30. Would have bought some if I wasn't broke.

Yeah, I'm in Australia & bought "My Golf" back in the day. I normally hate golf but this game is excellent & still occasionally fire it up. Regardless of whether you think you would like a golf game I guarantee you will enjoy it. An extremely well programmed game & really good with another player.

Double Dragon is a great 2600 game & although baffling at the start is seriously very easy once you get the hang of it. All you have to do to beat every enemy is never stand on exactly the same vertical level as they are. The enemies will only punch/kick you when they are aligned with your sprite. The trick is that you can hit them & inflict damage when they are slightly off level. Thus all you need to do is keep moving from top to bottom of the screen & back again, hitting the enemy only before they completey align with you. Once they have quickly move up or down the screen again & resume punching or kicking. Using this method I can always win it with 2 lives left. I always lose one on the final stage though because the time limit is so short. I honestly think this game is the jewel of the 2600 collection along with KLAX & California Games. The fact that this is even for the 2600 is amazing! They really squeezed every last drop out of the system's capability. It has better sound & moves than the C64 version!

Thanks Famicoman - much appreciated

Just today I was browsing in a local cash converters & saw a PS1 gadget called a "gold finger" that is meant to allow you to play imports without any internal modification of your playstation. I decided to buy it & checked it out with an import game when I got home and it would not load the game. I'm wondering if anyone knows whether I should have got some sort of boot disc included with it? All I got was the device itself which plugs into the expansion port. I plugged it in, put in my import disc, turned on the PS power & then selected from the menu that came up "play game". Since it didn't work I'm thinking maybe a boot disc for some sort of disc swapping is required? Any help greatly appreciated as I can't find any decent instructions on the Net!

Any update on this? Has the PS-X finally stopped having new releases? The newest game I have been able to find is FIFA 2005 & that was actually released in October last year I believe. Does anyone know any different? Even if that was the last release 10 years is a very impressive run for a console today!