Synthead

I bought a River Raid cart off ebay from your suggestion and I got it in the mail today. I LOVE this game! It's so ... GREAT! The visual and audio experience is incredible - I was really amazed that my 2600 could pull this off. I emulated it and still didn't know if it'd run well on my 2600 (I even soldered together a working parallel port interface for my TAC-2). What a great game! I'm gonna have to pick some other games you guys mentioned off ebay too - I have lot of faith in the taste of you guys' games!

Hex logo? Liek a hexagonal shape at the end of it? Ebay and thrift stores (especially in mideastern USA) are your best bet.

d2d is a great game!! I played this one for a long time on my friend's standalone Atari paddle beofre I got the real thing. It was lots of fun

I'll work on a label too! Man would it ever be great to have one of these!! Best of luck to all of the label contest contenders, I hope you all do a great job!

Maybe hell be so pissed that he doesn't even want the cart back. And by law, by giving it back, you legally won't have to give him his money. Then you can sell it again! That probably wouldn't work. This guy is an idiot, and he types in all caps. Don't worry. you > him. If anything stupid happens, he won't get away with it.

You know what would be really cool? A gameboy SP-type handheld Atari! I think it would be al ittle difficult to have a flip-open screen on a homebrew device though. That's really cool that you're doing a handheld project!

Whoaaaaaa ... this is the first time I've seen Atari 2600 history really come alive. I read this entire thread from beginning to now and it's truely amazing. This whole thing reminds me of the storyline of a book. The shopkeeper, the people in LV, the surgery, the DP ROM ... heh. That's fun. I really hope that you get this literally one-of-a-kind item fixed!! Take as much time as you need to. Don't be rushed by our impatience. If your doctor has a bad feeling about the surgery when it really starts to happen, sleep on it and do it the next day. Really. Take your time. I am very excited about this! BEST OF LUCK!!

I agree. You have to have pixel-precision to get out of it. It sucks ... I usually play that breakout-invaders version beacause of that. The bricks move, so you can't really get stuck until it hits a really low brick and it just jets off.

You're making a handheld Atari? That's been done before. Home Depot or Lowe's should have something that'll work if you dig around for a minute.

You have got to be fucking kidding me. You are. Tell me you are.

Whoa, bosgameboi makes a comeback! Thank you very much for dealing with the mess so maturely! I'm proud of you. Good job!

The original sticks don't have microswitches in them. They have these one-piece metal buttons that lie on the PCB. And they don't click heavily like the Archer sticks or anything (I have one), no, they're stealthy. You press down on the fire button or puch the stick around and until your character in the game does something, you're not sure that you've pushed hard enough. This can be frustrating sometimes cause when you need to dodge something, you move the stick, and it doesn't go anywhere. So you need to push it around fairly hard. If you are holding the stick with two hands, pressing the fire button repetitively while playing a game like Asteroids can make your thumb ache. Sometimes it's a comfortable controller at first, but after a while, I get confused on how to hold it without having my hands hurt. But that's just me. I like it for the fact that it was the original controller and all, but for sitting down and going hardcore on a game, I actually have to set the 40 down. I have a Tac-2 in the mail and I'm really excited about it. But just remember that this is my personal opinion about this - you might like it a lot more than I do!

Oh yeah, breakout too. Only you're not really winning when it gets stuck ... if you hit the top right corner of the wall just right at a 45 degree hit, you can get it so that as long as you stay all the way to the left, it'll keep bouncing and bouncing back without paddle movement. The ball hits the right side of the paddle, bounces twice around the corner, hits the wall, the left side of the paddle, then the wall, bounces twice off the corner, hits the right side of your paddle and repeats.

Yeah, I found that out a long time ago. The computer hits the ball downwards, bounces off the side, and if you slam it to the direction where it came from with the fire button down, the ball will pass the computer. Again. Again. Again. Again ... it's easy to win 21 - 0 this way if you're reaaaaaaaaaaally cheap. If I find myself losing by a long shot, I do this a few times to make it more fair, even though it really isn't making anything more so

Sometimes the "Modern Gaming" board makes me feel really old. I have no idea what trance is. I assume that means that I'm not into it. -S Trance is a sub-genre of techno/ electronica music CV Techno, trance, and electronica are both subgenres of electronic Techno does not describe all of electronic music, only the uppidy stuff you hear on the US radio all the time with the female vocals. There's good and bad stuff, but all I really tend to like is the subsubgenre, down techno. It's nice and preaceful most of the time. I just beat Rez!! Haven't covered the lost areas yet but I did it! Man this game rocks. I haven't gotten all the way through because of not having a VMU. I got it two days ago and it's been my DC's best friend.

Have you ever experimented with games by flicking the power switch off and on reasonably fast? You can do crazy stuff to a lot of games, sometimes advantageous. For example, glitch Space Invaders with the power switch just right so that the ground covers 1/2 of the screen and the UFO is just leaving to the left side (of coarse). Now hit reset, and you're invincible, invisible, and you have two missles that can be fired simultaneously. Neat huh?!

oids is actually the right way - it just sounds right when you say it phoenetically Very cool label ya have there!

Whoa that's really crazy. I never even thought it was something that complicated! I guess those games are really aged considering they're around 20-27 years old.

I've seen a trillion ebay auctions where the labels are all spotted with this black oil-lookin stuff. I even own two games that are this way to a certain amount. Why are they like this?

It really varies. Light guns are designed to pick up light off the screen and use it to interact with the game. But on these large screens, the light is displayed differently than CRTs. If you are having diffuculty getting your light gun to work, I hate to say it but try increasing the brightness of your TV.

Oh BTW - Most people try to seek out a heavy sixer because of it's originality. The other models aren't really that dominant to collectors because they can be found almost everywhere. The vader model wasn't produced in as large of numbers as the others, so they are a little more on the rarer side, but still isn't considered too valuable. One more thing I forgot to mention - the grill on the Atari was originally a place to put stereo speakers into. If you look on the 6-switchers, you'll see holes in the grill where they were supposed to be. Atari abandoned this idea of internal speakers at a late state, so the holes in the system remained. The 4-switch system's speaker spots were patched, so there were no vents. Another factoid - in the idea of stereo speakers in the Atari, they also integrated stereo sound to the circuitry. And it's still there! However, the L and R channels were combined. If you modify the Atari correctly, you can actually break apart the L and R channels to have true stereo sound. But most games were only programmed for mono audio, so unless you have a very unique game or a special homebrew title like "Synthcart," you aren't going to get stereo audio out of it. One more - the NES and the 2600 uses variations of the same CPU, the 6502 processor. It looks like a regular microchip by today's standards. Why do NES systems have more detail in their games? Well, other hardware, definately. For example, the NES has 16kb of RAM ... well ... the 2600 has 128 BYTES. Yeah. RAM was not cheap in 1977.

(1977s model) The dirst and original Atari system was what is now called the "heavy sixer." The plastic casing on the system was very thick, and all of the switches besides the 2-3 channel switch was on the dashboard. The L and R player difficulty was on the very left and right of the cart slot, and the other switches were moves aside for it. All of the writing that was easily visible on the system was in lowercase letters besides the Atari logo that was printed on the right-front side of the woodgrain. (1978s model) After that, Atari shaved off a few grams by not using so much plastic in the casing. Everything else was left the same way as it was. This almost visibly indistinguishable trait differs the "heavy sixer" as a 6-switch Atari. But if you look very closely, the plastic for the bottom casing that surrounds the woodgrain area is thicker. So it is somewhat visible, but to the point where if photos of the Atari were in bad quality, you couldn't tell. (1980s model) The next model was the four switch Atari. Atari, noticing that the A-B difficulty switches weren't being used all too often, moved the switches to the back. In accomidation, they also moved the remaining 4 switches close to the cart slot, thus named a 4-switch Atari. And all the undercase letters on the dashboard were shifted to uppercase letters. (1982s model) Then, Atari decided to change the look of their system to a completely black scheme, the "vader". The woodgrain look, found on the previous models, was abandoned, and all of the orange paint used to ornate the system and controllers was too. The paint on the "TOP" ring around the joystick controllers and around the dashboard was removed. In disgarding the style of the woodgrain look, the front of the system looked rather bland. So in return, Atari put their logo and the 2600 model name nice, bold, and in silver right on the front. Those are the major differences between the 2600 in constraint with it's classic look. The Jr model came later, and although it functioned the same, it looked nothing like a classic 2600. History goes on from there.

What's the high score club? Sounds fun ... I want in!!

Ditto. I gave him $8 for just Frogger, and I have nothing. What the hell. I really hope he sends it even though I'm not feelin so great about this guy. If he doesn't send it in spite of me posting here, that would be a pity. Youch. I was planning on playin that one out. Oh well. At least I didn't buy anything rare, shit ...

I sent your MO like weeks ago along with many recent PMs and emails ... what's going on?? I don't mean to sound like an ass, but where's my game?