kencrisis

Wow, that's quite a project. Thanks, I'll definitely be printing this out.

No amazing rare story here - I'm not in that league, just a player and not a "collector." However, my greatest find still keeps me smiling. I picked up a Seaquest cart for $2 about a year ago. Although I was around "in the day," I had never heard of this game and took a 2-buck chance on it. To this day it remains one of my top three most-played games and is often the only game I play when I turn on the 2600. A real surprise treat.

Been a while since I tried, so I thought I'd try again. Looking for these 2600 manuals (yeah, I know, wishful thinking!): Frostbite Gyruss Off the Wall PM me with price.

I just acquired some cans of Billy Beer for my game area.

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My 5-year old nephew enjoyed Fogger a lot, even though he never completed a "full board." I believe either Breakout or Super Breakout has a slowed-down little kid version game.

I think the power-of-two scheme sounds pretty solid. I'm looking forward to my free cart for coming up with the extra-life idea!

1. Starfire I have so much more to go on this game and it may take a lifetime. 2. Seaquest So addictive, so relentless, yet pleasingly gives you lots of extra lives for extended gameplay. 3. Super Breakout Gotta have a paddle game, eh? 4. Ice Hockey Always fun one-player game and great game to teach the nubile island princess I will find on the other side of the island and begin a passionate Atari affair with. 5. Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back With all the time in the world deserted on an island, maybe I'll finally have time to get good at this game!

Guilty younger brother here. My Atari time as a kid was mostly spent idly watching my big brother play, not let me play, looking at manuals, and chewing on the end of a joystick.

Well, I'm all for making a game friendly and ongoing rather than a ball buster. (After all, it's not an arcade game where you're looking for a player to pump quarters in -- you're just trying to create a satisfying experience.) I think the perfect example is Seaquest, where it's quite easy to earn an extra life. I play Seaquest all the time since I get a sense of "getting somewhere" with it because of the easy extra lives. I've been playing Reflex every day since I found out about it (and I reiterate: I can't wait for the cart!) and getting past 3000 points is still pretty dang hard for me, or near impossible. I'd like to see an extra life come along even before that marker. Of course, I'm sure some of our better gamers here may be unhappy with this. I admit that, although I play Atari all the time, I'm a pretty lame gamer.

Can you earn an extra ball at some point? If not, that would be a great feature to add if possible.

After a long time, I embarked this week on looking through my collection to find new games my wife and I could play together and would keep her interested enough to play more than 10 minutes with me. (Although she's been really into Seaquest lately, it's something she likes to do alone.) I thought I really had something with the Doubles games in Warlords (where 1 paddle controls 2 warlords simultaneously). I was so excited, but no, my wife was not interested for long. Then we tried the co-op games in Demon attack, where every 4 seconds the player who is shooting switches to the other player. She hated it - the chaos of the co-op games (which I find hilarious stupid fun) just frustrated her. And then, in a stroke of genius, I hit on something that really worked - got my wife excited and had us playing together for over an hour: In Breakout, there are 4-player games where two players play at the same time, each working their paddle on half the screen. We hooked up two sets of paddles (for 4 total) and when one ball was lost on the first "board," we would drop the paddle we were playing with, grab the other paddle and continue on the second board. My wife loved the ability to play at the same time, the ability to work together instead of competing against each other, and the general silliness of the paddle switching. So there you go, boys. Let me know if you try this and have any luck with your ladies!

This game is so fun and addictive. I would really like to see this on a cart -- by Xmas if possible so I have something to ask for!

So, this has been on my mind. It's bad to fry, yes? It can damage carts and/or consoles? I fried when I was a kid in the 70s/80s, but since I got back into the 2600, I've always been scared to try - sure I would damage something. Is this true?

I don't see Starfire or Seawolf there. Two GREAT homebrews.

So far (1 year back into 2600 since childhood), I tend to relish the short attention span factor. I play 5 or 6 games for about an hour, switching around. The only time I didn't do that was when I was trying to get the last available patch for Starfire, when I spent a few days playing it for over an hour and ended up missing out on getting that patch by half a day. Funny, now whenever I play that game, I always end up earning more points than the patch requirement (I think it was 3500 points) and it seems so easy to get there.

Because of work, I hadn't been able to play for about 2 weeks. The last few days I've been back and on a jag that involves Seawolf, Starfire, Seaquest, and Demon Attack. (I like to shoot things.) If I have time, my big plan for tomorrow is to pull out the trackball and spend some time with Millipede and Centipede.

Crystal clear, I remember my first encounter with Atari. It was Xmas 1977 or early '78. My rich friend got a original right when it came out in our town. The two things I remember thinking when I first saw it was that it was much bigger that I thought it would be and how much I thought of it as being a piece of "furniture" -- like a console TV or a console hi-fi. I thought the faux woodgrain accent was real wood (now that would've been cool, wouldn't it!).

All good suggestions, but wouldn't it be so much more fun to slip in a copy of Custer's Revenge and see the results! After all, we're talking 2600 games here; anyone that concerned about "questionable content" in what is probably history's most innocent collection of video game releases needs a serious reality check. Sorry, I couldn't resist the stab because I'm recently really down on my friend's insane Xtian hypocrite relatives who just put thier Down's-syndrome-child in a "home" because the poor innocent girl accidently said the "F" word.

I'd like to see that IMAGIC multicart display player thing. I'd also really like to watch someone play Kaboom well because I suck at it and am amazed at the scores people have posted.

Me. I'm into it for recreating my childhood. And the 2600 was the only console I ever owned or played until I got to college and had a brief stint with something called Nintendo. I do own a Gameboy ASP now, but I just have the various anthology games.

And along the same lines as my previous post, yes Q-tips are notoriously fuzzy and prone to leaving fibers on what you're cleaning. If you're really serious about cleaning your cartridge contacts, there are two options I use: Most computer stores sell microfiber rags that are meant for cleaning monitor and LCD screens -- wrap one around a pen or a Q-tip. Pro recording music stores sell a version of the Q-tip that has a longer stick and much tighter cotton weave that generally leaves no fibers behind. These can be expensive, but I prefer these over the microfiber cloth. (Although, of course for me they were free; I stole about 2 thousand from a recording studio I worked at over a decade ago and still have a ton of them.)

I'm no expert, but I feel blasting my AC is WAY preferable to the effects of humidity. After all, doesn't an AC just dry air out -- which can only be a good thing for the contacts? On the other hand AC may cause a problem for labels and glue (I have a few Parker Bros. carts with pretty brittle labels coming off the carts) -- any opinions on this? Coming from a music recording background I've always cringed when people mention using alcohol on metal. Not a good thing in my book. For all my recording equipment, home stereo equipment (cassette player heads, audio jacks, and RCA connections) and Atari cartriges, I highly recommend Caig/Hosa DeoxIT D5: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DeoxIT For the truly anal among us, Caig offers a 3-step product line that starts with (1) DeoxIT for cleaning, (2) ProGold for contact "enhancement and protection," and (3) PreservIT contact protector for "severe environments." http://store.caig.com/

The thing about Gyruss is that it's ALL soundtrack. I think I would play it more if I could get a satisfying plink, boink, or swhoom when I shot something. Although, I have to say, I just pulled it out and really do enjoy the stripped-down Bach.

I totally had that AM/FM filp-clock radio in the foreground. I've been looking for it for a reasonable price on Ebay for a while.