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wongojack

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Posts posted by wongojack

  1. Posted

    Colecovision 

    C-So! 13 

    Caos Begins 20 

    Children of the Night 14 

    Knight Lore 5 

    Majikazo 11 

    Popeye 9 

    Zaxxon Super Game 30 

    Zombie Incident 12 

     

    Colecovision stuff played via the CollectorVision Phoenix.  We may need to classify the CollectorVision differently at some point.  I know some of these games benefit from using the built in SGM and there are going to be some exclusive games for the Phoenix (or already are).

    • Like 4

  5. Posted

    On 7/23/2020 at 9:19 PM, wongojack said:

    I recently took apart a PS2 and cleaned up the drive rails so the eye could move easily and read discs.  I also cleaned up a ton of dust and then accidentally pulled the cable for the on/off switch out.  It was a bit delicate to get the cable plugged back in, but it is in there now and working. 

     

    I also replaced the voltage regulator on a 7800 with a DC/DC converter.  I actually had to try two different converters as the first one didn't get the job done.  Kind of an expensive fix in the end considering I had to order multiple parts, but the 7805 was coming loose, and I wasn't sure I could re-seat the heatsync quite right again.

     

    Next up is to install my GDEMU in my Dreamcast.

    I did install a GDEMU in my Dreamcast which involved going to a local hardware store to buy a correctly sized 'through-hole' standoff.  I am still evaluating if I want to disable the 12v regulator on the power board of that thing.

     

    I also configured all the software for a soft-mod PS2 project.  Holy crap was that time consuming.  I filled a 2tb drive with PS2 ISOs, and I never want to do it again.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    8 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

    Yes, it's possible to actually get all of your people killed by means other than causing the nuclear reactor in the basement to explode, I believe. I have only ever played the PC version, so I'm not sure if that got changed for console or whatever, though. I distinctly remember that you can drain the pool, move some people in it, refill the pool, and then they will drown. The most famous way, of course, is to cook the hamster in the microwave, causing it to explode (Yum! Should I take white or dark meat?), and then give the exploded remains to Weird Ed, who will kill you.

    Thank You!  I knew there was something with the hamster, but I couldn't remember exactly

    • Like 3

  7. Posted

    Does anyone else think that 7.5B is a bit high?  I'm thinking about the other products MS owns that are worth 7B.  Maybe something like System Center or Sharepoint?  SQL, Office and Windows are all worth double digit Billions.  Those products have existing user bases that pay them either upon upgrade or per cloud usage. However, with this purchase, I guess you are getting:

    • The entire back catalog and can re-sell that or package it with GamePass
    • Fallout 76 and Old Republic subscribers

     

    To produce revenue on almost everything else requires more untested product to be released and sell.  And as we've observed, the talent generally drifts away over time, so there's no guarantee of producing similar products in the future.  I'd say it was a VERY good day for ZeniMax ownership.  Well done for them.

  8. Posted

    1 hour ago, Eltigro said:

    Another longish list of NES games...

     

    NES

    Maniac Mansion - 40 min (I was doing another Until I Die stream... but I don't think you can die in this one.  Can you?)

     

     

    I know that this is the origin of the Gilbert and Schafer philosophy of never creating a no-win situation.  However, I want to say that I have indeed died in MM at some point.  I have a memory of being locked in the dungeon and getting a game over.  It seems like there are other ways to get killed along the way too.  You have to work at it though, they don't kill you easily.

    • Like 3

  10. Posted

    A7800

    Asteroids 101

    Baby Pac-Man 42

    Pac-Man Collection 14

    Scrapyard Dog 141

    Space Invaders 5

    Xevious 57

     

    More 7800 time from me.  I'd never really given Scrapyard Dog a chance before.  Side-scrolling platformers are really not my favorite genre, but there's definitely some enjoyment to be had, and I was surprised that I was motivated to actually go back to it during the week. 

     

    I keep trying to like Xevious, but I really don't.  There's something unsatisfying about it.  I think its the way that the flying enemies sort of tease you by flying in patterns to avoid you (at the beginning).  I can't remember the arcade version very well, but I think it happens there too.  There's also what seem to be invisible enemies and other shots that come at you from offscreen . . . The game doesn't seem that hard just kinda unfair.  I've still never actually destroyed the first boss tank thingy.  How do you do it?  Sigh . . . I wish the 7800 had 1942 instead.

    • Like 4

  12. Posted

    On 10/29/2019 at 4:28 PM, Giles N said:

    Scrapyard Dogs (tip 2):

     

    In the sewer levels, there are the circular tubes you can both stand in and sometimes enter.

     

    Important: your character Louie, can stay all the way to the right or left of the tube circle; it looks like he stands in the air with no pixels beneath his feet.

     

    This^ is how far out you must be, when performing the longest jumps needed.

     

    And you need to do it with Louie in speed.

     

    So 

    1) run to gain speed

    2) jump to tube-entrance-platform

    3) on the absolute edge, which looks like Louie stands in the air, push jump and hold to the right until you reach the far-away tiles from where you can proceed.

    I am just now starting to play this game.  I got into one of the sewer rooms on 1-3 and navigated all the way through the pipes to the end.  There was some object there at the end (marker 19 visible).  It looked like a black pot with a flower growing out of it.  The manual doesn't seem to mention this object.  When I touch it, I don't seem to get anything.  It just puts be out of the room.  What is the point of this?

  13. Posted

    30 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

    The conspiracy theories with companies purposely sabotaging their own products, like Coleco with the Atari 2600 and Intellivision ports of Donkey Kong, Apple with the IIGS, Tandy with the CoCo 3, etc., really have to go away. Rarely, if ever, will a company purposely do something to weaken or diminish their own product. After all, it's their product with their name on it, and the only harm they'd do is directly to themselves. If they really didn't want a product out there, they'd either discontinue it or not release it in the first place. It's almost always other factors at play, like resources, time, or skill.

     

     

    I hear where you are coming from here, but this bullsh!+ below is also very believable.  "I want more funds for my product.  I've reviewed the numbers, can't you see how much better it is?  Just look at the difference" <points at wrong screen>.   I mean, I've been in that meeting!

    1 hour ago, JamesD said:

    The Tandy 1000 group supposedly tried to get the CoCo line discontinued, and pointed out how much better the 1000 version of Rampage looked in a meeting!
    Except it turned out that they pointed to the CoCo 3 screen which was the better looking version and that insured the CoCo was still manufactured a couple more years.
    When the CoCo was discontinued, they supposedly destroyed all the design documents, etc... to make sure the decision was final.
    Someone from the 1000 group no doubt.
     

     



    Beyond price, I'd have to say games were the #1 thing people did with their computers.
    People might buy a word processor, or Print Master, but they came back over and over for games.
    Suggesting people somehow chose a machine by features is probably overrating most customer's knowledge.
    I saw a lot of customers pass through my partner's computer store, and for every person that knew anything about computers, there were a hundred that knew nothing.

    We'd hear "So and so said this", "I want to get what the schools have", "this magazine says", "it has to run this", "it has to be IBM",  etc...
    The people that said "it has to run this" often didn't even know what that software did, someone just told them they needed to be able to run it.
    I almost never heard anyone say anything about the hardware beyond "I need a hard drive", "I need a printer", or "I have to dial in to the university computer".
    They certainly weren't asking about quality, performance, etc...  and any decision made based on that was indirect via a friend that knows computers, or a buyer's guide.
    If performance was an issue, they just knew more MHz was better.
    Oddly enough, a lot of people had never even heard of Commodore or Amiga was, so I'm pretty sure they didn't know what a C64 was. 
    Everyone knew who Radio Shack, Apple, and IBM were.
    From what I could tell, people didn't want to know about computers, they only got one because they thought they had to.
    I think the reason a lot of people use tablets instead of computers now, is people still don't want to know about computers.
    They see a tablet as an appliance, but a computer somehow has the expectation it requires you know something special.
     

     

    I got chills reading that last part.  The more things change . . .

  14. Posted

    On 9/11/2020 at 10:37 AM, wongojack said:

     

    So no crash for computers but perhaps a slower growth rate than from 80 to 83

     

    I also found the quote I was thinking of from Bill's (and Matt Barton's) book regarding machines in-between 8bit and 16bit.  It is on page 116 of Vintage Game Consoles: The Greatest Platforms of All Time.  This is an excellent book and despite its title, it dips deeply into computer platforms.  I was expected to flip through and just re-read things I already knew, but instead, it is deeply engaging with anecdotes and helpful context explanations about each era as well as console/platform.  The quote is this:

     

    " . . . no single computer model would ever again enjoy the market share of the C-64 in its heyday.  In hindsight, there was simply no way to replicate that special combination of power and price that the C-64 embodied.  This was evident by the long list of failed competitors in its class, including Commodore's own C-16 and Plus/4, or with enhanced variations like the C-128 or unreleased C-65 prototype., which promised to be the ultimate 8-bit computer.  The problem for these wannabes, however, was that for millions of fans, they already owned the "ultimate" 8-bit computer and would accept no substitutes."

     

     

    And I will insist on my opinion of the ZX Spectrum (the only computer in the Spectrum line I've ever tried).  Based solely on looks, it is the ultimate example of "you had to be there."  As someone who didn't live through the

    popularity of that platform, it simply looks like a downgraded compromise.

     

    On 9/11/2020 at 3:25 PM, wongojack said:

     

    I actually just managed last month to get all the items in the cauldron on Knight Lore, and you'll find no argument from me on this statement I underlined.  Americans had things sorta dumbed down to them with consoles despite the evidence in this thread to the contrary.  Here's another quote from the same book about that:

     

    "Other parts of the world evolved more slowly, with England and other European countries still favoring price over performance.  In particular, this meant more sustained competition within the personal computer scene . . . The vibrancy of the European market in this generation also birthed a whole army of "bedroom coders" whose skills would soon be appreciated the world over, giving the Americans a run for their money . . ."

     

    8 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

    I've always argued that the C-64 had the best combination of features, performance, and price point, so there was really no need for more low end 8-bit competition. Once a minimum quality level is reached (in this case, good graphics and sound and 64K memory), that's good enough for most people. That was reached with the C-64 upon its release, followed soon enough by a killer price point that the competition had a hard time matching. Once the software was in place, it was game over for everyone else on the low end (or relied on 8-bit technology) who wasn't already established.

    In terms of a mid-range solution, I don't think there was really much of a market for one. This was not a time that you could do much more with a computer offering between what a C-64 could do and what the higher end platforms like the Macintosh, ST, Amiga, and PC could do. And as you stated, there were pseudo in-betweeners like the C-128 and CoCo 3, as sort of super 8-bits, but they really were just meant to extend already established platforms. So, if anything, those were the mid-range solutions for the small percentage of users who wanted a bit more punch and/or a way to further extend their original 8-bit investments. And frankly, by the time something like the Amiga 500 hit, the higher end platforms suddenly became surprisingly price competitive with something like a similarly decked out CoCo 3 (with "required" disk drive, monitor, and RAM expansion to use its extra features) as just one example. So really, the higher end platforms came down to mid-point pricing after just a handful of years themselves.

     

    Have always appreciated your perspective on this Bill ;)

     

    • Like 2

  16. Posted

    16 hours ago, Kurt_Woloch said:

    Wow, what an honor to see Baby Pac-Man at the top of last week's list! Seems like Wongojack really likes my pinball logic there. ;-) Actually, a baby always has two parents... in this case this would be Bob and me. ;-) And I admit that I still like coding very much, so this probably won't be the last retro game I've participated in... but at the moment I've got other things to do.

     

    Anyway, here are my times for this past week (September 7th through 13th) on classic systems...

     

    Atari 2600:

    Balloon trip - 3 min.

     

    Well, I promised you I wouldn't have much time for gaming this week and next week, but I did manage to sneak in one game of "Balloon trip", a homebrew game a bit similar to Flappy Bird or Joust, but pretty simple... you've got mines and the occasional balloon coming at you at increasing speeds, and you have to avoid the mines and catch the balloons. After a number of balloons you get bonus time where there's only balloons on screen before the game reverts to normal. And that's pretty much it... one game was enough to see it all.

    The pinball parts of BPM are excellent Kurt.  Thank you for the effort you put in to help make it a reality.  I'm actually not really that big a fan of Pac-Man in general, but the hybrid cabinet was always intriguing, and in recent years, I've had a chance to play it in real life a few times.  On this version, I do find that when the captive ball is in the position above the left flipper it seems much more difficult to hit than when above the right flipper.  Sometimes I will play an entire game and even earn an extra ball before I dislodge it from the left position.  Although, I will say that I spent most of my time playing with a CX40 and when I switched to a Proline or gamepad the result was slightly different.  Whatever, I'm not complaining. The game is great.

     

    Regarding Balloon trip.  I downloaded it once and played it about as long as you.  I believe it is inspired by the often overlooked Balloon Fight for NES.  Balloon Fight is one of those NES games that somehow missed its window for popularity (at least in the USA).  It is clearly a new take on Joust, but has a few different modes and offers a great high score challenge.  I think if it came out in 1984 it would have been a huge hit, but it didn't reach much of the world until gaming had sort of moved on from wanting to challenge for high scores.

    • Like 2

  17. Posted

    A2600

    Frostbite 45

    Star Wars ESB 39

     

    A7800

    Asteroids 13

    Baby Pac-Man 55

    Commando 61

    Desert Falcon 13

    Ms. Pac-Man 21

    Pole Position II 52 (top score on Fuji 65,550)

    Rikki & Vikki 519

    Robotron: 2084 35

    Scrapyard Dog 45

    T:me Salvo 11

    Touchdown Football 35

     

    I continued my tour of my 7800 library and a couple 2600 games.  These were all played on actual carts.  Rikki & Vikki took over once it arrived.  What a great game, and a fantastic addition to the 7800 library.  If you've been on the fence about buying one, they are (finally) running out.  I got #513 of 550.  The team at PenguinNet says there are no plans to make more.  Of course in this case, you can purchase the game for Windows too.

    • Like 5
    • Thanks 1

  21. Posted

    A case could be made for Pole Position II.  I know it is the pack-in, but it is a fun interpretation of the original.  Isn't it also the only racing game on the system?  Maybe Fatal Run being the other, but I thought that was only released in some regions. 

     

    I think I'd probably do these four from the original library:

    Food Fight

    Pole Position 2

    Commando

    Ms. PacMan

  22. Posted

    Wow - I wasn't even watching this thread.  I just finally got around to repairing one of my 7800s and then playing through some of the library when I decided I should have a copy.  I got #513 and understand the run is almost sold out.  Good accidental timing on my part I suppose.

     

    After playing for about 3 hours or so, I kinda want to discuss gameplay, but this doesn't seem like the thread to do it.  Maybe I'll start another . . .

    • Like 1
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