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I doubt the CPU is an issue. I've never had a GUS so I can't really comment on what issues people might have setting it up. If the game actually has an option for the GUS in it's setup though, then I'd expect it to work easily. Is the card configured in a very standard way, or does it have non-default settings? Some games might be sloppy about handling non-default configs. Is the card possibly Plug-n-Play? If so, go into the BIOS and make sure it's configured for Plug and Play OS = NO That way the BIOS will configure the PnP devices, since DOS can't do that itself. There is a Plug-n-Play utility for DOS I had to install once on an old board, but I don't think a board the age of yours would need that. The only way I can imagine the CPU being a problem is if the games you're having trouble with are timing sensitive. A P3-500 is significantly faster than anything DOS developers were programming for. But timing sensitive bugs are pretty unusual, typically the only problem you'd have is the game running too fast.

Hu? What was the difference between the Famicon SMB2 and the NES SMB2? They're completely different games. The gameplay and graphics of the famicom game are almost identical to SMB1, but it's much harder and had a few modifications to make it more difficult. It was apparently intended for people who had mastered the first game and wanted a new challenge. It was only published in the US on the SNES compilation "Super Mario All Stars", where the game is called "The Lost Levels". But that SNES port has fancied-up graphics, and I'd like to have the original 8-bit version. There's no convenient way to run it except on an emulator, because the original was only released on the Famicom Disk System.

I'd really like to be able to download the original Famicom version of SMB2. The only version that was ever available in the US was the remade SNES version, and that doesn't interest me.

Next-gen, but not the *current* next-gen: Back in the Genesis/SNES days, my mom was with me in Babbage's and she noticed the new Neo-Geo boxes proudly displayed behind the checkout counter. She was shocked at the price ($650) and asked the guy working there essentially when the madness would end. The guy working there then started bragging about the specs and declared that it would be the last game system anybody would need to buy. This was it - the final game system.

I had a 450MHz at the time, and remember seeing the 500MHz advertised on AMD's site as an upcoming product. But ultimately I'm almost sure it never came out. I've read that the reason was the integrated cache made it too expensive. Of course the "+" models got there though. === If you get an original K6-3, then don't underestimate the cooling requirements. I permanently damaged mine, and it only runs 400MHz stable now. A more modern Socket-370 hsf has worked well though. If you need multiple full length ISA slots, I agree that you may have trouble finding that without ATX. I have an AT Tyan S1590, and there's only 1 slot where I can install an AWE32 card as I recall. The S1590 can be flashed with a hacked BIOS which enables support for the K6+ cpu's. I flashed the BIOS but I've never actually tried a CPU. I don't think it has the exact voltage jumpers you need either, but it can get close enough I think. A common Pentium should be just fine though for any DOS games I've played. If you go ATX for more usable slots, it might be better to get a Slot-1 board with a P2. In particular, the 440LX boards are a throwaway item nowadays, as are the P2 233-333's that run on them. As for where to get old boards, you might find them in a local computer shop. Those places primarily do repairs and upgrades for people, and they'll often have boxes of old junk they sell really cheap. You can find cases that way too.

According to ebay (or maybe it's Paypal, or both), it's the seller's responsibility to deliver the item to you as described. That's why sellers normally use delivery confirmation on their packages. Sellers who claim they aren't responsible for items lost in shipping are factually wrong. Insurance is not the buyer's problem - it's the shipper's. Some inexperienced sellers don't seem to understand this, but it sounds like this guy has probably done enough business on ebay to know better. I guess your ultimate decision depends on whether you look at this as strictly a business affair, or a personal one. If it's just business, maybe it's better to swallow your pride and keep the relationship intact. But considering the formal complaint process you've already gotten into, he may have already blocked you anyway. You may have to kiss his feet to do business with him again. If you don't have the stomach for that, then go ahead with the complaint. If he can't show a delivery confirmation number, then you'll win. Correspondence sent through the complaint system is probably visible to the Paypal investigator, whereas they won't see messages you send through ebay or private email. The $25 fee only applies in certain circumstances, I think that's what eBay charges for their process. The Paypal process is free, at least it was for me when I had to use it recently.

This makes me sad. Sounds like Zelda has evolved into an RPG. I guess that's why I haven't enjoyed the modern ones as much. Zelda used to be pick up and play. It didn't need a long winded story or a multi-hour tutorial. Haven't played this one, but from what people are writing the game design sounds disappointing. The old action-adventure niche was lots of fun. Modern game designers try to control things too much. I got imprisoned in the first town in OOT. That got old fast. Zelda 3 controlled the player's movement more than I'd have liked, but it was still probably the most fun of the series. The storytelling was reasonable. Zelda 1 was wide open to explore and nobody could nag you with more than 5 words. Loved it.

Everybody has their own way of classifying game systems. I wouldn't call the current batch "3rd generation", but I'm sure my classifications would still not mesh with everybody else's. It's mostly arbitrary. If somebody said "3rd generation Playstations", then I'd agree with that. The PS1 started the current era in my mind.

Contra Life Force River City Ransom there's probably 100 more, but I'm having trouble thinking of them.

The i430VX maxes out at 66MHz frontside bus, so it's not what anybody would consider "Super" socket 7. The Super-7 concept was what happened after Intel abandoned socket 7, and their competitors had to find a way to go forward without violating Intel's patents. Any Intel chipset pretty much by definition isn't Super Socket 7. The Super 7 chipsets added 100MHz bus support and AGP. Still, you might be lucky and have the necessary voltage settings to run a K6-2/3 as shadow mentioned. If so, you can get a 6X multiplier (400MHz) on those chips by setting the board for 1.5x. I remember reading the extended memory programming specs a long time ago, and I remember that they don't allow for more than 64MB of RAM. I don't think there's any DOS programs that will go beyond that. I wouldn't mess with a PCI sound card personally, they're all going to be plug-n-play, which is a pain in the neck with DOS.

I got to the last level once about... 18 years ago, but died there. Today I played about 10 times before finally breaking through and having a much better game. For great justice. I did it. Add this game to the beaten list. I died on the boss of level 5 my 2nd time through. The difficulty didn't change at all on the 2nd lap, so it wouldn't be too hard for a bored person to max this out. 3 laps would do it. 546,200

I agree with that. When I was younger, I used to think that EGM was the greatest thing ever, because unlike magazines like Nintendo Power they weren't connected to a game publisher. But I was overlooking the fact that advertising revenue still creates a conflict of interest. Jaguar fans have posted before about slanted anti-Jag reviews and commentary in EGM, and I think they're probably right. Personality politics could also lead an influential reviewer to praise/pan a game from somebody he does/doesn't like. End users are the most reliable source, as long as you have a decent number of user reviews to look through. I'd like it if you could filter user reviews according to the likes/dislikes of the reviewers. For example, if I'm reading reviews on an RPG, I'm more interested in the opinion of Wizardry and Ultima fans than I am in the opinion of Final Fantasy types. I don't want the latter to influence the average ratings I see.

The ratio of software sales/console would indicate how much people are enjoying each of the machines. But like you said, that figure is probably too heavily influenced by the different launch lineups, and a disproportionate number of "sold" PS3's are still in distribution to the eventual ebay buyer. In at least 6 months or so that might be an interesting statistic though.

You're probably right. I forgot about the points you earn during the stage, I only thought about the bonus you get at the end.

Two. Always two. It's worth the extra trouble when the bonus stages hit. I mean, the bonus stage is a maximum of, what, like 20,000 points? Hard to pass that up. 10,000. But it's 3900 or less if you miss even a single ship. I try to get 2 ships before the bonus stage, but mostly I think the double ship was a trick to get kids to lose their games faster. I get hit constantly that way.

Weird - I never noticed that. I was curious so I just checked the 7800 Software Standards. I guess it's compliant, they don't actually require you to have 4 difficulty levels. They also don't seem to require that the high score be maintained - they just say it has to zero the scores if you change settings. That was an oversight in these specs. Maybe score * shooting% could be used.

It was just on here, I guess it was a rerun. They tried to cover too much material. It became a very dry narrative, with no time for any interesting anecdotes. They had to omit lots of systems, which is why for example they had to attribute the Sony CDROM to the NES. The systems mentioned were Odyssey, Pong, VCS, Intellivision (barely), NES, Genesis, Playstation, and current stuff. Systems that didn't have a huge market effect were mostly omitted. I was bored in the EA segment. I made it up to the kid who made a cancer game, that was a very boring segment and not historically significant. When I saw there was yet another segment coming, I bailed. I liked the Kalinske interview - he was dead on in his assessment of what was wrong with the Genesis launch. Then they talked about the marketing value of Sonic showing off system speed, but showed screenshots of some 3D version obviously not from the Genesis. That was very stupid. There is a good interview with Kalinske on the web somewhere, it was posted maybe 6 months ago. They could have told an interesting story about Tetris, but they skipped it. They could have interviewed PR people and gone into some detail about the goals/design of the next-gen systems, but they didn't. That legendary Nintendo game designer (don't know his name exactly) could have been lionized in more detail. The legal disputes between Atari and 3rd party developers could have been discussed. Without any detail about anything, it was dull. They should have narrowed the scope and focused on something - their attempt to summarize all of video game history just made it boring. "The Rise and Fall of Atari" would have been an interesting story, for example.

Atari 2600 - First great game console. Very flexible design gave it a longer life than anyone could have imagined. Atari 7800 - Disappointing at the time, but I love it now from a programming point of view. Interesting system. Nintendo ES, er.. NES - First system IMO with good sound, which added a new dimension to the experience. Has great controllers, and designed/capable of those wonderful scrolling platformers and long adventure titles. I was obsessed with getting this machine, more than any other. Sega Genesis - 16-bit arcade machine in a box. Sega CD - 16-bit arcade machine with large ROM capacity. Final Fight CD showed what is possible, too bad they didn't make more games like that. Nintendo 64 - Most powerful cartridge based system, and I like cartridges. Sony PS2 - 3D gaming hardware matured. This system runs 3D games WELL. I'd probably feel the same way about Dreamcast, if I had any experience with it. The PS2 will age well and be a classic.

I'm not enjoying this game much, but I'd probably like it better on a real cart. 134,750

I don't know anything about the A8, but DLI's on the 7800 are simple. You just put a flag in the DLL, and you'll get an interrupt whenever Maria hits that spot.

I never heard of the Apple Pippin until reading people talk about it on this site. Now it's been brought up again, so I tried to find some information about it. I can't find any screenshots anywhere. Has nobody ever actually bothered to hook one of these things up and play it? I'm starting to wonder. All I can find are pictures of the machine and some game cases.

I know you said magazine, but if you're interested in a video, you might enjoy this: http://www.archive.org/details/Amigaand1985 That was a TV show covering the introduction of the Amiga and Atari ST. I never have even laid eyes on either of these machines, but was curious about both of them so I enjoyed watching it recently. They have hundreds of old episodes of that show archived, I'm sure there must be several others relating to the ST. If you want to make a DVD, you can even download high quality MPEG-2 files.

Years from now, when people start to take an interest in old firmware versions, I wonder if this initial version will be lost. There won't be many of these consoles with the original firmware, and even the launch titles are going to flash over it.

They should be charging more like $1000 for it, that would balance out the supply and demand. But apparently Sony doesn't allow them to set their own prices. So we have a substantial gap in the market, and these ridiculous lines are the result. Some seem to believe that Sony is holding back on production. I disagree. This is a cutting-edge, new product. There are always manufacturing problems early on. The problems with manufacturing Blu-Ray hardware are well known. These PS3's will probably have a high incidence of defects, whereas later production runs will be more reliable. If that plays out, it will indicate that yields on these PS3's were poor, and Sony had to cut close margins to get systems out the door. Which in turn means they didn't hold back on production. I do believe Sony could be trying to create hysteria with unrealistic pricing, however, which causes these long lines. Sony could start the pricing at $1000 or so, then cut the price when production catches up. But they may be afraid of turning people off at launch, and having them immediately buy something else instead of waiting for a price drop.

The DLL is a data structure that tells the Maria which display list to use for what scanlines. Maria will then only look at *1* display list for the duration of the scanline. That display list contains headers for every object that will appear on that scanline. So if you have a display list with headers that point to 5 bitmaps of Pac-Man, then you'll end up seeing all 5 of those Pac-Man images rendered together on the same scanline. If you just want 1 ghost and 1 pacman on the same scanline, then your display list would have 1 header pointing to a ghost bitmap, and 1 header pointing to a Pac-Man bitmap. Animation would be accomplished by changing the graphics pointers between frames. That's correct. Once you have the data structures set up, Maria will scan that information during DMA and render it.