Swami

"recommend" was the word used. Having it available and recommending it are two separate things. Show me where Nintendo recommends limiting playtime and I'll believe you. 🙂

Me neither, but I imagine eBay and Etsy prices will need to be competitive ... or are you waiting for something to pop up on Goodwill, haha.

Wow, the devil's gonna need a parka. A quick look at eBay says $130 is a great price.

Something weird with your post.

To which video are you referring?

Some kind of huge upset is always possible, but COVID19 and not having the money like Nintendo did for the Wii's tour of all manner of fairs and events are the main things hindering hyper-casual market penetration. Still, new motion control has done very well historically with hyper-casuals and kids and it is really is the first advanced controller to have similarity to a modern smart phone - which people may take to. The Wii U controller was huge and limiting as, generally, only one personal could use it the way games were made - in part because it was also very expensive. You also had to use the stylus with the type of screen interface for it to respond well.

Hi, I've been screwing around with this cx80 I got cheap. It is in good condition but I only get down, right, down-right angle, and up-left angle in joystick and similar in trackball mode. It's in really good exterior condition, but the circuit board looks exposed to the elements. The outer edge ground strip looks eaten away, but retains connectivity with multimeter and the ribbon cables keep breaking from the circuit board when I try to investigate things under the circuit board or clean it. I did spend several hours resoldering wires back in place of the first ribbon cable to come loose, but afraid I might being frying something, like chips or the optical encoders, cuz it takes me so long. I'm still very novice at soldering and a bit shaky. It there anyone who does repairs on these cx80 trak-balls? I hate to throw anything classic like this away.

I think there’s only five or six. I was thinking more along the lines of the arcade section of Atari Vault on Steam. It has about 15-20 arcade games. Edit: Hmmm ... okay. A lot more games than I thought. I guess you could make a cart from them all. So, that makes two more Atari carts I would like to see. 😁 I’ve seen those Star Wars ones on a couple of At Games/1up products, but never seen them in the Atari made arcade collections. Licensing I suppose. I was recalling Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Gravitar, Red Baron, Black Widow and Battlezone and maybe a vaguely remembered very early one. Somehow spaced Tempest, but wasn't thinking too hard. I forgot the Star Wars ones were Atari and somehow thought it was all Lucasfilms. Probably because Atari never seemed to have any connection to any of the ports and collections. Even the 2600/ColecoVision ports were Parker Bros.

I’m hoping for the Atari Arcade cart to come out next. A lot of my favorites much better than the 2600 versions. The screen is not the best designed for it, but, oh well. I wonder how it would be to play them with an option of the dpad on the bottom? A lot of times they substitute the NES ports, but they didn’t have the vector graphics ones.

The CX80s are more rare than the CX22's, so they will generally be pricier. I did have one of four CX22s I bought from eBay that came with both button stems broke (stems under the button that press the sensor) and I super-glued them together again. The CX80 has a much better, practically invincible level mechanism. I also had a new CX80 from video 61 modded for two button 7800 operation that didn't work in one pair of directions, but I was able to send it back to them and they fixed it and now it works great. In another CX80, the solder broke on one of the wire-to-board connections, but connections and traces looked a bit corroded, while the ones in the video below look like new. So, all these issues could be due to abuse. The CX80 buttons are much larger than the CX22 buttons. Overall, though, they function about the same as far as pressing and rolling, IMHO. Wiring and design is a lot screwier inside the CX80, with all the positioning, mechanisms and wiring going on below the circuit board. Its all above on the CX22, making repairs simpler. Regarding mice, I see four of the ten trackball games in the store require you to choose either trackball or type of mouse you want and the other six are all-inclusive. Not sure how that happened. There are also adapters that let you use USB or PS/2 mice as Atari ST/Amiga mice, but that a whole other topic discussed in a couple other threads.

I would go with the cx80 or the switched cx22, which you can identify from the cream colored lower half and absence of the words 2600 and pro-line on the top of the case on the edge nearest you. That way, you can play all the trackball conversion carts sold in the Atari Age store or the rims if you have a multicart. Also, an Atari ST or Amiga mouse works with many of those roms. They may have the ST and Amiga mouse choice on the carts as well, but I don’t remember, but someone here knows I’m sure.

Yeah, I’ve got a lot of this in another thread referenced above. I just linked to it to avoid redundancy. A lot of it was from an iesposita post. Still, some interesting details added. I wasn't aware Dan didn't design the CX80 inner working, although they seem much more convoluted than the CX22's for some reason. I’m not sue who didn’t dictate what, but someone besides Dan decided it was pointless to include the switch on the 2600 branded model. He referred to the “upper echelon” not asking his advice once the product was done. I really dont don’t get the part where it’s said they made the cx80 to look more like the XL line. The xl is black and cream. The cx22 switched is black and cream. The Atari 1010 and 1050 are black and cream. The Atari cx80 is all black.

That post was based on some misinformation I corrected after further research. There is mostly rumors out there hard to sort through. The Warner reference was just a senior moment, though, haha. I found that serial number theory I mentioned that I saw posted several places was actually wrong as both had their own individual serial numbering and the switched one came first and just sold tons more. I see how the theory of a change at 15,000 started, though, since the 2600 branded model stopped at around 15,000 units while the switched one went over 200,000. I individually checked several dozen serial numbers for cx-22s on eBay, Facebook, atariage, etc., to find that 15,000 switcharoo was a false rumor. Although, of the many switched cx-22 I found, only two late in the search had serial numbers below 15,000, while all the switchless ones were under 15,000 so the theory seems supported to me until then. Finding a switched model with a serial number of 000189 is what really killed the 15,000 switcheroo theory. Although they were released for sale about the same time according to magazine articles, I think Dan said that the CX-53 was actually designed before the CX-22. The fact that the 2600 branded version was switchless tells me they weren’t planning true track ball for the 2600, but it’s only speculation why they removed the switch, as both were released within a few months of each other; Possibly to not confuse 2600 owners, although it would suck if you bought one thinking it was the same as the one that played missile command in TB mode on the 8-bits. Dan Kramer did the design work for the CX-22 and CX-80 but said no one from “above” ever explained the why’s to engineers of the three different models (cx80, switched and switchless cx22). Again, you will find a few rumors out there. One rumor is the xl/xe division people insisted on their own model, which resulted in the cx80, which ended up mostly over in Europe. Unfortunately, CX80s have no visible serial numbers, so, hard to say how many were made.

I see a lot of rotation/wobble in and out of plane for UFOs and bombs. If IE is staying with this style, IMHO, I think the asteroids should be quaking and/or rotating/spinning a bit around their own axes - in or out of plane as well. They are basically sliding pictures now. Addressing the odd style mix again, I guess. As before, I know it is a work in progress.

Having taught a physical science liberal arts course at a university, I can tell you the cloud part was one of the favorites.

Funstock is out of Collectors Packs. I wonder if they will get more in. I see no email for contact. It was a funstock exclusive. I just calmly panicked and bought a premium on eBay, free shipping for $99 and four of the other carts I was most interested in from Funstock. Shipping without the console is only $7. If I’d bought the other three cart it would have only been About $15 more than the collectors pack, so not too bad. Most of the premiums on eBay are $130 or more.

Well known pseudo sport more for fun with well known license and extremely old ... I would guess professional bowling association. It was big as a televised sport in the 70s and 80s with celebrity bowling as well as professionals. Apparently, they were bowling in ancient Egypt. The big license I will guess is hockey or basketball. There’s also soccer. I’ll go that order.

Strange. I have a way old iPhone 6 Plus.

Hitting fire always starts the game. I actually prefer the tilt mode.

Maybe Tommy can get one of his German friends to overdub these relevant Gamescon videos in English, since they are not very long.

Slightly off topic, but I worry more about very limited run physical only games of under 100 units that may never find their way to being accessible to anyone in the distant future.

Keep up, Rev. haha.

I discussed this with Bill and some other folks over in the Switch forum a while ago. Basically, at some point for *many systems* Near Mint collectors will be trading NIB games that may not work and piracy is the Most likely source for ongoing play. It could, in fact, be more of a problem with 90s disks than SD media. I brought up this issue with Tommy myself a while ago on the Q&A thread (I am a big supporter of unending access to a game) and he said he "had me covered", which would be something he can't talk about yet. He's used that phrase a couple times with long-term game availability - the network goes down and your Amico dies and have to get a new one. It's quite amazing 50 year old 2nd gen game carts are still working (for the most part) 50+ years later. Edit: There was recently a discussion with someone whose CDs (could've been Dreamcast or Sega CD) weren't working anymore due to bit rot and the solution was repros being sold on Etsy. Also, the download only aspect of Amico is not something I'm a fan of, but I face the same problem with many, many download only games I own from other systems. It is more convenient and frequently cheaper, but loses something of its permanence.

Flash media goes bad in 5-10 years anyway, so you'd be in the same boat. We're seeing it with some of the 90s CD games as well.