Laner

Frogger, Frogger, Frogger, Frogger, Pac-Man

Ack... Kawari, not Kawaii (can't edit my post???)

Nice - my childhood C64 has had a similar treatment... many of the internal parts have been swapped with modern replacements. I need to look into that Kawaii board - that looks sweet.

All the Swordquest games on a single cart!

Pitfall II is supported through Stella on other platforms. I'm not sure what would prevent it from working on the 2600+

Hell yeah...

I believe there is a fundamental incompatibility between the 2600+ and those multicarts. The best solution I can see is updating the firmware to allow more direct access to the emulators and run ROMs from a USB drive (or internal memory, if there is enough space available), similar to how the NES/SNES/PS1 mini devices were hacked a few years ago.

A lot of TV USB ports provide minimal power (and I don't know of many with usb-c ports); It may be better to get a separate power supply. Something like this should be more than sufficient: https://www.amazon.com/iPhone-Charger-Delivery-AirPods-Samsung/dp/B09CKBPZ34/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=2RP6N1VAOUND8&keywords=usb-c+power+adapter&qid=1700233183&sprefix=usb-c+power%2Caps%2C107&sr=8-2-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

No silver? Pass.

I bought one of these 7800-modded Space Invaders joysticks from someone here on AA way back in the day - though I don't recall who and my searching comes up empty. I absolutely loved it, but the cable developed a short and I have zero soldering skills to fix it. Is there be anyone on this thread who could take a look at it and repair it for me?

I literally can't even... Type A dot and Type B dot, thankyouverymuch.

I would argue it was a significant percentage that made the jump. The 2600 sold roughly 30M units in it's lifetime; other contemporary consoles account for another ~7M units. The Commodore 64/128 alone sold ~22M units. You also had the Atari 8-bits, the CoCo line, the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Ti 99-4/a, etc. that account for many million more. In very broad strokes, you have roughly (+/- 10%) the same number of 8-bit home computers and pre-NES consoles sold. Obviously there are a lot of other factors at play that make a 1:1 comparison impossible - 8-bit computers used for tasks other than gaming, both consoles and computers purchased as a response to the current fad but never really used, 2600s and 8-bit computers purchased *after* the introduction of the NES, etc. And simply the fact that we lack hard sales numbers in many cases. Anyway - did everyone who owned a pre-crash console move to a home computer? No. But I think there is enough evidence to indicate that more than a "small percentage" made the jump from consoles to home computers as their primary gaming devices prior to the NES.

It's hard to say if those adjustments NE146 illustrated above would have made the game less offensive to my 9 year old mind. Maybe slightly. But even with the graphical adjustments, it simply doesn't play like Pac-man. I continue to be astounded at the hubris by Atari to look at the original port, and say "Yep, that's good. Ship it!"

Yes - Laser Blast was an uncharacteristic miss from Activision/David Crane

I never thought about it that way, but that's a good point. 2600 Defender's shortcomings didn't bother me nearly as much as Pac-Man's.

What also stung for me was that Atari showed they *could* make a good port of Pac-Man with the 8-bit computer version. I think I recognized the differences between the two platforms at the time (I only had a 2600), but it still bugged me that there was a much more faithful version available. The 2600 version held absolutely no appeal to me.

The past several years of Chenais running the show left a bad taste in a lot of peoples mouths - crypto, hotels, the VCS, $1000 collector sets, etc. I don't think the 2600+ is nearly as egregious as the VCS, but I can understand the naysayer' sentiments to a degree. Additionally, there's a loud contingent of Nintendo fans who see anything prior to the NES as crap and worthy of ridicule, so I'm sure that factors in as well.

I'm definitely more interested in this than the VCS, but I'm still having a hard time pulling the trigger on the purchase.

I'd I'd pop the cart open, ensue the HOKEY is aligned correctly, and reseat it.

When will the HOKEYs be available separately? I have one of the earlier Concertos, but no POKEY/HOKEY

I was all about the Commodore 64 at the time. But my brother got the 7800 for Christmas one year, then the NES the next year. The 7800 more or less collected dust after the NES entered the picture.

My little brother wanted an NES in the worst way for Christmas 86 or 87. My dad asked me if Atari or Nintendo was the way to go. As someone who was more invested in the Commodore 64 at the time and really didn't care for the Nintendo aesthetic (still don't, TBH...), I told him to go with the 7800. My brother's reaction was similar to your nephew's... he just barely contained his utter disappointment at not getting the NES. And we have the moment captured on video, so we can relive the disappointment for years to come!

Ozmoo only packages up a z-code interpreter and data file into a disk or prg image; thats the part that will let you take a pre-existing z-code story and make it Plus/4 compatible. It does not allow you to create the adventure itself - that's where the real work lies. You would need to create the story (plot, items, descriptions, logic, etc.) first. Something like PunyInform - https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/punyinform-a-new-library-for-writing-text-adventures-for-old-computers - is reasonably easy to manage for a non-programmer. While it's simple to understand, creating a text adventure of any sort of complexity is going to be a very involved process. I am not a programmer, however I was was able to recreate my home in PunyInform in a few hours. But there was no plot or environment manipulation to speak of, which is where the real work lies. -- If you wanted to go the choose your own adventure route rather than a proper Infocom-style text adventure, there are tools such as Twine - https://twinery.org/ - that can help. No idea if it's possible to port that work to a Plus/4 though.

Bejeweled -