jhd

This is actually my preferred solution; my PS 2 is the most recent dedicated gaming device that I own. I am quite happy with the absence of mandatory online connectivity, and I have yet to discover anything unplayable due to bugs.

Several years ago, I purchased a (used) PC game at a thrift shop. The original game CD was present, of course, but the previous owner had thoughtfully downloaded the various patches and updates, and saved them to a floppy disk -- which was included in the same box

Are there any significant differences from the released versions (i.e. gameplay and/or graphics)?

This looks like an interesting project, but does the Coco have the capacity to run this? It has been a long time since I wrote any code for the Coco, but my impression was that the only way to get any kind of decent speed was hand-coded, optimized assembly language. AGD seems much like coding in a high-level language. It is certainly much easier to program, but the trade-off is the lack of speed. This is ok for some applications, but not games. Recall that the 6809 in the Coco runs at < 1 Mhz. You might considering targeting the Coco 3 instead as that has more powerful hardware, while the video chip is still mostly compatible with the 6847.

I bought a Dell 486 in Fall 1993, and it did not include a sound card. Indeed, it was several years later that I acquired a second-hand AdLib card at a flea market. There was software to route Windows 3.1 sounds to the internal speaker, though that caused an obvious performance hit. Most DOS games provided PC speaker sound effects as an option, but the quality was obviously much reduced.

I'm sure that many of them could be improved by a replacement label -- my copy of Keystone Kapers has the label half ripped-off (it was that way when I bought it). As my collection is stored rather than displayed, however, it just seems like a lot of time and effort to make things look better that nobody (other than me) will ever see.

I have disassembled consoles to clean them thoroughly, but it would never have occurred to me to go to this much trouble to replace cartridge labels. Happily, with one or two exceptions, none of my cartridges have labels in really poor condition.

The Vid Kid's Book of Home Video Games (1984) was recently added to archive.org. It was purportedly written by an eleven year-old. This book includes mini-reviews of many 2600, 5200, Colecovision, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, and Vectrex games. Interestingly, it includes a very brief "review" of Donald Duck's Speedboat (p. 38). Was this game reviewed anywhere else? I wonder how the author obtained an otherwise unreleased game (or if the "review" was entirely based on a marketing description, and he never actually played the game.)

I started collecting Atari 2600 games back way in about 1990, when they were very cheap and still ubiquitous at local garage sales and such like. I have about 130 to 140 games in my collection. Other than a small handful of online trades, everything was purchased locally (including some NIB games at retail in the early-1990s). I have a few R6 games (e.g. Gremlins, River Raid II). I am not actively adding to my collection, though I will still buy a cheap game that I do not have if I find one at a thrift shop or flea market. I am not a completest; I have no interest in sports games or titles aimed at children.

This actually existed as a commercial product in the mid-to-late 1950s; there would be various, horizontal coloured stripes across the CRT. Perhaps a little bit before your time

You might try checking contemporary Coco magazines. I recall that Hot Coco published a commented Extended Color Basic listing monthly through much of 1984, and some other magazines published at least sections of annotated ROMs. I do not specifically recall annotated listings for Disk Basic, but as I did not have a disk drive (nor any knowledge of assembly language), it would have not been of any interest to me.

Commencing in about the 1990s, there was a local political magazine/gossip rag that had an innovative strategy to avoid libel suits. Each issue was produced by a separate company. So, Issue 1 Ltd. would be created, and before the magazine hit the newsstand, all of the assets would be transferred to Issue 2 Ltd, and so on and so forth. There was no point in suing the publisher of the issue as it was just an empty shell. In so far as I am aware, this strategy worked well for them -- I just discovered that the title is still being published.

Realistically, no individual "purchaser" of this very possibly imaginary hardware is going to sue; the amounts of money involved are far too small to justify the time and filing fees required to go to court -- and this assumes that someone does it pro se rather than hiring counsel. Even if someone successfully sues and receives a (default) judgement, it will be against a corporate shell company (established in another jurisdiction) with minimal or no assets, that is itself a subsidiary of an entity incorporated in another country. I am quite certain that the legal team at Atari understands this concept very well. I think that it might be a stretch to consider that e-mail message to constitute a formal contract, but there is an argument to be made. Does anyone know if the Carbolic Smoke Ball case is considered good law in the United States?

Do you live alone? Could someone else in your household have purchased it and stored it in the closet (recently or in the distant past)?

There were just a few small arcades in the city where I grew-up; most were associated with bowling alleys. We did not have Aladdin's Castle or any other recognizable franchises in Canada. My family used to regularly visit New England (mostly Portland, Maine and the exurbs of Boston, like Worcester and Auburn) in the mid-1980s. A high point of these trips for me was visiting the truly massive Dream Machine arcade located in the Worcester Galleria; that establishment seemed larger than all of the arcades back home, combined. Some of the other area malls had smaller arcades, too. One hotel that we stayed at (in Worcester, I think) had a lonely Tapper arcade game in the lobby; I had never seen one before (or since).

I have the Atari Greatest Hits collection on my phone, but I only really play a very few games. As noted, the controls are not really adequate for fast action games. I also have a SNES emulator that is only used to play RPGs -- I am a massive fan of that genre, and turn-based combat works acceptably with the on screen controls. In addition, I play a handful of strategy games that are not emulated.

This news is admittedly only marginally gaming related, but all of these franchises have previously spawned video games. The Canadian firm DHX Media has just sold a 39% interest in the "Peanuts" to Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. DHX Media also currently holds the rights to Strawberry Shortcake and Mega Man. http://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/dhx-media-to-cut-its-debt-load-with-money-from-sony-peanuts-deal-ceo

On a slightly related note, does anyone actually pick through garbage bins for salvageable/resalable items? I once found a 2600 joystick and a crushed Donkey Kong(?) cartridge on the ground beside a garbage bin in my (former) apartment complex. There may have been other stuff had I gone dumpster diving after them. More recently, someone pitched an Xbox 360 console in the original box -- I admittedly checked it out (it was lying directly on top; I did not dig for it ), but it was missing the hard drive.

Be careful that saving things "for parts" does not lead to unrestrained hoarding. My Grandfather, having survived both the Depression and the Second World War, was reluctant to throw away anything that might have value or be useful someday in the future. After he died, it took literally several years to empty his house so it could be sold. We started the process with garage sales and donations to charity -- by the end, there was a rapidly filling dumpster parked in the front yard! Personally, I have a decent-size apartment, but not enough space to store non-working hardware, old computer parts, etc. If I cannot use something and/or it is non-functional, it goes either to Goodwill or the dumpster behind the building.

This is excellent advice! I once received a parcel where the label was only holding on by one tiny corner; another day in transit, and the box would have been lost forever. The label had adhesive on the back, but it was not taped-down or otherwise secured.

There is a Frogger-like game for the PS 2 that uses a pad. I only saw the box, not the gameplay, but perhaps it may provide a source of inspiration,

Given the multiple changes in corporate ownership and structure, I would be surprised if any corporate records still exist from the 1970s -- barring something donated to a public repository a few random bits held by private collectors. You might try reviewing old published annual reports; those would be more accessible than original sales records. That said, I highly doubt that you will be able to find solid numbers (rather than best-guess estimates). Some years ago, I reviewed the business press in the mid-1980s for a series of articles on the video game industry, and the best data that I found were gross annual sales figures, and some comments about the relative market share of the major players. Given the competitive nature of the market, companies were unwilling to publicly release much information.

Stunt Cycle already exists: http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/stuntcycle/stuntcycle.htm

I have the same issue with Chrome -- I get music/sound effects, but I cannot get past the title screen. It does not even load with Firefox or Internet Explorer.

The probability of guessing all three correctly is roughly .000085. So, assuming completely random chance, it will take slightly more than 10,000 guesses to get all three correct. An analysis of the relative rarity of games by these three publishers could significantly improve those odds, but computing that is beyond my capability.