Reality Studio

Is there any way to still get in on this, or do I have to wait for a future 5th run?

As others have said there are so many good ones, but Draconian and Stay Frosty 2 are our personal favorites so far for single player and Fall Down and Medieval Mayhem for coop. Strong mention to Juno First as well.

Oh that wasn't me, I didn't actually leave any feedback although I probably should! Not happy with these joysticks at all It does still leave two unanswered questions though. First, why did I get that graphical glitch on Medieval Mayhem that Darrell noticed and second, how come Porky's doesn't work on the Harmony Encore? Now that my 2600 passed all the diagnostic tests I figure it's working fine, so curious why those two still happen. The diagnostic rom linked above is very cool btw, you need the Atari Service Manual to figure it out but with that it's a neat tool to test the machine. Oh btw Thomas, love yours and Darrell's homebrew games, just great stuff guys! I intend to buy them all

I opened up that knock off joystick to figure out why it was behaving so weird, a piece had broken off and got wedged elsewhere, looks like multiple inputs were being selected as a result causing odd behavior. I remember us playing Combat just fine with it originally, so it must have broke sometime after that. That joystick was used on only 3 streams and it broke, figures. It wasn't rattling hence why it didn't even occur to me that it had broken inside, it felt normal and it was quiet. Anyways that means on next stream there will be a Gunfight!

Omfg I just figured it out lol. It's because of the knock off Atari controllers I bought from Amazon! So I had bought two of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M188I0X ..and I brought one home for the testing. On a whim I decided to try Combat to see what would happen, and I noticed player 2 using that joystick was moving bizarre, like the tank was going at double speed and was very difficult to control! I have the original Atari controller that came with the console, they don't work great but they do work so on a whim I plugged those in and both tanks controlled perfectly. Then I swapped P2 joystick for the above clone joystick and bizarre controls again. So I put in Gunfight and presto, works perfect with the original 40 year old Atari joysticks. Put in the clone joystick on port 2 and bam, bad controls. Put back original Atari joystick and controls work again. So problem solved Thanks for the help everyone, I think maybe we'll just use Genesis controllers going forwards and I'll toss the clone joysticks into the trash.

Hmm yeah I'll clean the cart slot contacts as well and check for cold solder joints. I believe the voltage regulator on mine is new, and the board below is the rgb mod which is also fairly new (see the pic). The cap on the left I believe is original. The little stick I put on there that says 1986 is the first time I had opened the machine, I of course got it years before that. I reseated the top visible chip but that didn't help.I'm going through the diagnostic cart right now. So far that's looking good, it does not report any ram error. It's also passing the color bar test which checks the 6507 cpu, 6532 ram, and TIA. To be continued...

Well I bring my Atari home, try Gunfight on the Harmony and it works perfectly fine. Now I'm thinking the cart itself is bad so I try the original cart and now that's also working perfectly fine. I dunno, no idea what happened that night where it wouldn't work right, I'm confused lol, but seems like everything is working now. Maybe I'll reseat socketed chips just in case. EDIT: Ok I take that back, just tried it again and this time player 2 only moves left and right, happens on both the original cart and on the Harmony cart. Something weird is going on, time to pop open the Atari.

Cool, ok tomorrow I'll try pressing down on all the chips just in case and try the diagnostic carts as well, see if that helps.

Ok well if it is a ram issue, if I remember right the 128 bytes of ram are in the riot chip. If that's the case would swapping the riot chip be a good first test? Do you guys know if that chip is socketed?

Just realized I didn't answer some of the questions: In single player mode the game works, but she wasn't able to shoot reliably. The difficulty switches work fine in other games. Like when we play Video Olympics, I'll set player 2 difficulty to A so I have a smaller paddle, works ok. I didn't try cleaning the contacts of the cart because it's brand new. but I suppose I can still try that just in case.

Hmm that's interesting, it is my original 2600 from when I was a kid, only thing I've had done to it is Yurkie did the rgb/svideo out mod to it. I didn't even notice the graphical glitch on MM, maybe because it was so quick. If it was a ram issue wouldn't it affect more games given that most games used a good chunk of the 128 bytes of ram? Good idea to try Gunfight on the Harmony, I will try that! On the same note, the only other time we noticed an obvious issue was with the game Porky's, that game does not work right but I thought it was because it was incompatible with the Harmony cart. Check the video here: https://youtu.be/nETMYkJbsts?&t=6682 ...but now I'm wondering, is it because of my Atari? Is Porky's known to work ok on the Harmony? If there is a ram tester available I'll definitely try that as well!

Hey guys, so we were playing a bunch of 2600 homebrew games live on our Twitch stream, and came across an odd problem. We tried Gunfight which we just bought, looks great, but could not get the controls to work right. The second player control would only go up, and the first person control wouldn't shoot reliably. Really weird, we haven't had such an issue on any other game, homebrew or otherwise. Made sure the right difficulty switch was set so that second player was in human mode. Here's a video of us discovering the issue: https://youtu.be/rUu8n7JpPS4?t=3752 It seems weird that a cart could be defective like this, which is why I'm wondering if maybe it's a rare incompatibility of some kind?

Sweet, just sent you an email

Just found this, had no idea a multicart for Atari computers even existed! Are these still available? If so I'd like to buy one.

Me neither, but the thread has a bunch of posts on it. No idea what's up but I have to take that into account.

Sweet, I'll take it. I'll follow up in private message.

I saw his link, and he modded my Atari 2600 some time ago. Aside from not having a system to send him, the main issues there are that he took months to have my Atari 2600 done which normally isn't a big deal, but I'm hoping to get something much quicker this time to use live on stream. Also the various negative feedback in his thread is honestly making me a bit nervous to go that route again. Hence I'm looking for other options right now to get a machine quicker.

Hey guys, is there any place that one can buy a fully modded and restored Colecovision, ideally with the F18 board? There's only one place I know of: https://colecovisionupgradesandsales.ecwid.com/#!/HDMI-Full-System/p/68660378/category=20210143 ...but they never have them in stock. I want to get one to play it live on Twitch, so would prefer a restored one so it's reliable, and a modded one so I can get either svideo or rgb out. Having the F18 would be ideal but if not going with a stock one would be fine.

Hey guys thanks for the info. It's actually a mini din connector, much smaller than the one on the Genesis, and it does have sound routede through it. I didn't do the install, I paid someone on Atari Age to do it for me, From the looks of it seems like I'd have to open the console and disconnect the audio part going to the din cable. I don't have a Framemeister, just a cheaper euro scart to hdmi converter that I got on Amazon which works great with my Sega Genesis. It does not have an audio in though (just scart in) so even if I disconnected audio on the rgb part, I'd have no way to route audio through that converter since it just has a single scart in and a single hdmi out. Anyways I guess I won't bother with it then, the svideo out on the 2600 works fine and I have an svideo to hdmi converter, so I'll ignore the rgb out. Thanks for the help guys.

Hey guys, I had my 2600 modded by someone on this forum for both s-video and rgb out. I had only tested the s-video out when I got it and that works perfect, but I just recently got a scart converter to try the rgb out and the quality on that is kinda poor. Basically it has snow or interference patterns on it. I know it's not because of the scart converter because I tried that with my Sega Genesis as well and that's perfectly clear. I'm thinking of popping it open to see if it's an easy fix, but offhand would you guys know what it could be? Like maybe a simple grounding issue or something like that? Or could it be due to the 2600->Scart cable I'm using? I'm using the one he supplied way back when he modded the machine for me.

Ahh so that's what it is. I thought it was from the boxes of toy models we used to assemble back in the 80s.

Omg I never even heard of that hack lol, that's awesome. I just got a Genesis and Mega Everdrive today actually, so at some point we'll have to try that!

Thanks! On the first stream we did together I used an old dual core i3 pc I had lying around, it could only do 720p 30fps capture so any games that did flickering or interlacing tricks didn't look right. In Yars Revenge for example the quotiles shield would sometimes totally disappear on the stream. The above posted stream is our third stream and for that one I switched to better hardware, so it can capture at 60fps. Glad I did because I suspect the four homebrew games I played would have looked bad on stream on the old 30fps capture box. What a weird coincidence lol. For original games I mostly use Everdrive type carts since I figure the copyrights are long over, the companies are long gone and those games are all used so no one is missing out on sales anyways. For all new stuff like homebrews though I'll always buy them to support you guys.

Hmm you sure? I had made sure they were both to the right (when looking at the console), which should be position B.

The joysticks are actually these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M188I0X They are ok, I'll probably stick with them but maybe have Amber use a 3 button Sega Genesis controller next time. The paddles though I did get from Best Electronics. Hmm ok I will check them out. Are they remakes of the official boxes, or did they make their own versions? For example in my next batch of games I bought Lady Bug, that one had an official box but those are long gone so I got the cart only version. Would be cool to have a box for that, but ideally based off the official box design. Another game I bought was Juno First, if that one never had a box then I'd be cool with a remake box since that would be better than nothing. Basically I prefer to go official design when possible, but if they don't exist then a custom made one would work.