Feralstorm

Don't do 'rapid-fire' joystick taps either. that's what screwed me up initially.

I haven't done a lot of searching, but I have done some, and come up dry. There's a lot of hacks of Asteroids out there - has anyone got source code/disassemblies for 2600 Asteroids? (preferably with comments, but I take what I can get)

I may get another FB2 once it's been confirmed the fixes in sound and whatnot are in. May also spread a few around as giftsthis holiday season.

Well, there definititely is a black key if you flip the switch to B&W.

depending on the background color (and the TV) the green castle key often looks black, at least to me. In most ADV2 games I've played, the green castle key is usually locked inside the home (yellow) castle.

Probably a little off with this one - Q-bee, "Vampire Savior" "I'll eat your head. I won't suck, but I will swallow." Lotta good 'win' quotes in that game.

Just picked up a second FB2. shoulda waited a bit longer, as this one is also Quadrun-speech-free, but at least it has the Atari Millipede (got one of each kind now). Guessing it's related to the Quadrun issue - I noticed the Millipede "marching" noise seems to be missing. anyone else notice this?

the biggest problem I'd see with something like that would be the implementation. a 'true' vector system would require its own screen like the Vectrex, and creating a system to emulate the vector games on a TV screen might be too expensive to be the kind of consumer-priced thing the Flashback systems are. (not to mention some games are vertical screens and some horizontal). A collection of vector game ports could do the job, but I hope they would budget for better programming work than the Fb1 and FB2 got.

Since I don't have a hacked FB2 with an Indy 500 cartridge, I can't say, but I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

Why yes, that's what it's supposed to look like. So,ething wrong with it?

The first Flashback probably wouldn't have been looked on quite so harshly (NES-like hardware 'n' all) if the game ports were programmed more competently.

Here 'tis, As you can see, the stick broke off at the start of the screw threads.

Anyone here have their FB2 joysticks break on them? I've had my FB2 for about a month now, not playing constantly, but getting some time in almost daily. I try to avoid working them too hard, though a few others have played with my FB2 and may have been harder on the controllers than I realize. A couple days back, I noticed something rattling around inside the joystick base. I opened it up, and found one of the tabs around the edges of the stick base (the flat part that presses the rubber contacts down) had snapped off. The controller worked fine otherwise, so I took the broken tab out and closed the controller. The next day, the controller was rattling again with another snapped tab, which I removed. The day after that, as I finished up a spirited game of Adventure 2, the entire stick snapped off at the point where it screws into the base. Still got another controller left, but I'm a little wary that it might do the same thing. So I'm wondering if there's any similar stories out there. I'm hoping this was mostly a fluke, as otherwise I really like the FB2 controller.

Good luck finding much not 'made in China' nowadays. Then again, many, if not most 'Made in China' things are decent to good nowadays. Hey, 'Made in Japan' used to be considered a mark of low quality (and low cost) as little as thirty years ago, but it sure ain't today. Back on topic - JayC, it sounds like you got a fluke bum unit (more than the already known stuff anyway) since I'm sure if there was a whole run of them that screwed up, we'd have heard something already.

Personally, I think 2600 Crazy Climber is pretty good. The main thing about it is that the controls were changed to one joystick from the arcade's two. There are 2600 graphics issues and quirks as well, but still it's a pretty good effort and a fun game IMO.

The manual is rather dissapointing, especially in the game descriptions/instructions. They really more work there to properly describe the gameplay, controls, and options. Not to mention the Space Duel writeup mentions gameplay with connected ships, which isn't in the Flashback versions.

I know of two hidden games (a new category pops up when you input the 'code' right), and oddly enough, you need paddles for both of them. (explains why they're hidden I'm sure)

managed to access the hidden games pretty consistently now, where I had trouble before. My problem was I was moving the joystick too fast, as in TAPTAPTAPTAPTAP., where it works better if you allow a (very) short stop between taps TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP, as it were. If anyone's still having problems, and have all the other details right, that could be your problem. or not.

dunno how easy it is to modify control schemes in that game, but seems you could make it "Frogger-like", so you only step up or down one level, and have to let up then move the stick again to step another level.

Atari (7800): Food Fight, Robotron, Ms. Pac-Man Atari (2600): Stargate, Dig Dug, Millipede Activision: Pitfall 2, Pressure Cooker, Keystone Kapers Starpath: Frogger, Suicide Mission, umm... M Network: Astroblast, Astroblast, Astroblast Fox: Turmoil, MASH, Beany Bopper others?

Makes me wish there were some kids around the FB2 here. True how kids see things their own way. I remember a Christmas a couple years back where I bought my cousin's kids some of the kiddie-fied Transformers toys. (a car/robot and an ape/robot) They loved to play with them, but the car was just a toy car to race on the floor, and the other robot wood be flown around the room while the kid yells "Bud Lide Ear!!" (Buzz Lightyear). Maybe I should spread some FB2's around this holiday season.

The message density is because the FB2 is the flavor of the month. You'd see the same thing if another big/popular stand-alone showed up, be it arcadestick or Pong machine.

I could see a Flashback (1/2/3) sub-category formed here once enough are sold to gain a fair following. If this was made a PONG-machine only category, where do the pepole with other non cartridge/disk video games (Plug and Play TV game sticks) go?

That's awfully cool to hear. Hope it's possible to get some of the better arcade ports (of non-Atari arcade games) on a future Flashback. Previously, I was thinking it might be possible (though very unlikely) to take some of the older arcade ports, such as Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Defender, and rename them (like Munch-man and Urban Protector or whatever). The games themselves have strong differences in graphics and design elements, and they don't display any copyrights other than Atari's own. I wouldn't expect it's something that could be 'gotten away with' effectively, but it's one option. Seems I've seen other games in the past get rereleased with name changes (or minor changes to the game itself) to get around licensing issues.

Does Missile Command on a cartridge show the same display oddities as the built-in?