Lord Thag

Well, this year I hit the motherload. After years of nothing, I head over to the folks house and unwrap a jax stick (the classy space invaders one), Star Fire and Thrust for the 2600(!), and (*incredibly*) a Vectrex with 9 games! Needless to say, today has been fun

Merry Christmas everyone! This xmas has been crazy! I hope you all have been as lucky as I have! Let me start at the beginning. A long time ago, I bought the core of my original 2600 collection off of my cousin Kevin, who has (rather loudly) regretted it ever since. He goes so far as to come over fairly often to play Atari (twice a month or more even). So I figured I'd hook him up this year with a refurbished 2600 and about 30 games. Heh. He was grinning like a five year old when he opened it, too. Ok, here is the point. Apparently, folks, when you give the gift of Atari, you get it in return. Now normally, I *might* manage to get an xbox game or so, but most of my family regards my glassic gaming collecting with raised eyebrows and indifferent shrugs. Not this year, though! So I open my first present, and I get one of those cool 5-1 Arcade game controller thingumies. I'm thinking 'sweet! space invaders!'. I figured that was about as far as my luck was gonna hold. So mom hands me the next one. It's kinda small. About the same size as an atari game even. I think 'nah, couldn't be', and I open it. I blink. It's Star Fire for the 2600 from good ol AA! I'm smiling and thinking 'how the heck did my internet challenged parents pull this off?' I tell the folks thanks and open the next, slightly bigger box. !!? This time it's Thrust+. I'm grinning like the cheshire cat now. This is crazy! No one EVER gets me atari stuff, and now I have two of the new homebrews. I figure by now that this has just got to be it, but mom hands me this really big, heavy box next. I figure there's no way this is going to be Atari stuff, and as it turns out, I'm right. I must have stared at it for at least a minute. It's a friggin' VECTREX!! With like 10 games!!! I am now, officially, in shock. A Vectrex and half the games in one fell swoop. I've never even so much as SEEN one in the wild before. They got me Fortress of Narzod even! Not to mention two of the most fun 2600 games I've played in YEARS (great job guys!), and an arcade stick to boot! A merry retro xmas indeed!

I think the fact that it's non-confrontational probably adds to the appeal too. I have a coastie friend who got stationed way up north in a perpetual blizzard this year. She called today and asked me to send her an Atari with, you guessed it, pac-man and frogger. Fortunately for her, I have a pile of 'mystery' carts that's almost ten thick, and all of them, predictably, yurned out to be frogger. Stupid mystery cart fairy. Couldn't he at least give me a Froggie II?

I can answer that now. I've played a few games of the 5200 version today, and it looks and playes very well, even with stock controllers. Very bright and colorfull. If you've got a 5200, pick it up, it's definately worth the $20 or so you'll pay to get it. Man, I sure do miss these 2d adventure/platform games *sniff*. There's nothing quite like 'em nowadays.

Due to a lot of ebay sellers and two *very* avid collectors, N Cal thrifting hasn't paid off much in years. I have better luck picking up NES games at Gamecrazy/EB games etc. It used to be where I could walk into a thrift, and walk out with (for example) 30+ intellivision games with over half of the lot rare, for 10$. It's never been very good for atari up here due to a collector/retailer who has been avidly collecting since atari began. He's got most of the local sellers in his stable, and the pretty much sell him everything 'behind the counter'. Nowadays, I'm lucky if I find 16-bit stuff. Fortunately, I happen to be friends with one of those avid collectors (we're talkin' 4000+ games in his room ), so he occasionally hooks me up. I got a stack of 10 or so games yesterday from him, including a couple of the rare Fox games, all of the atari 'kiddie' games (snoopy! yay!) and an R7 Xonox double-ender I guess I can't complain

I've never played the 2600 version, but I did beat the 8-bit one a long time ago. Don't remember many tips, but I do remember being able to actually beat it. Like most games of the era, it didn't have much of an ending, and I *think* it re-started after you cleared the dungeon at a faster pace. Dunno. We're talking 20 years here I did however, manage to score the 5200 version yesterday, and I plan on playing it, so if I remember how to get past those floors, I'll let you know.

I played SotN to death when I had a PSX. If you like it, you should try Castlevania Aria of Sorrow on the GBA. It's very similar and just as fun.

Ok, well all know the dreadful swordquest series, right? Most people would rather eat boiled slug, or smear themselves with moldy gopher poo before playing these incomprehensible instruments of torture, right? Naturally! So why am I bringing this up? Here's the deal. I was doing one of my occasional 'sift through the collection and play stuff that I never play' days, and I popped in Earthworld. While pretty pointless, I must admit that some of the 'action sequences' are fairly fun, and I kind of like the puzzle solving thing AS A CONCEPT, but not at all in it's actual execution. This got me to thinking why these games are so hated. The answer, obviously, is that all of the clues that you find are arrived at by chance and endless, mind-numbing trial and error. There is no 'problem sloving', only random item placement ad nauseum right? Here's my idea. Since the solutions to all three games have been released, what if someone 'reverse engineered' a series of puzzles and clues based on the actual correct solutions, and based on the mythos that the games were supposedly based on (zodiac, tree of life etc.)? That way, if you were to occasionally pop one of these games in, there would be, umm, a POINT. Here's what I mean: Lets say to get a clue in earthworld (I'm making this one up) you have to put the shield and the ring in, oh, lets say pisces. I could do a clue like this: 'In lightless depths of memory entwined A darkness circles 'round the mind Worn by hand in shadowed places For surcease of woe, clear coucil bears A warding against the darts of innocence' Or something like. With a little group effort, we might be able to do graphical clues, or even put together a printable booklet. I think, if you actually had something to work with, something to actually solve, the games might actually be playable. What do you all think? Would anyone be interested in this, or should I just go eat an nice bowl of boiled slug?

Wow! Talk about your childhood flashbacks! I had forgotten all about that unit! I remember (vaguely) having one of those for a month or so at one point (I think I traded with someone at school, but the kids mom made me give it back). I also remember being really bummed out when that happened. Crazy how many obscure electronic do-dads were made back then. Good luck finding one!

I remember owning Lolo 1 back in the day and beating it. I really had fun with that one, as I recall. Solomon's Key still stands as one of the NES greats, though. Very fun, extremely challenging, with a huge pile of secrets. If only more games were that well designed...

Or you could perform weird, radioactive experiments on yourself to try to develop mutant superpowers that allow you to fight the forces of evil and joystick decay One thing you can do actually, is get one of those little sticker pads that come with most 'assemble yourself' bookshelves, desks etc. They are often the same size as the little rubber pads, and you could just swap them out. The other thing you might try is using a little 303 protectant spray (the car-care stuff, black bottle) on them. My secondary car has rubber seals that bleed like that, but if you use that stuff on them, it stops it. Dunno. Give it a shot.

I picked it up yesterday, and I must say, I'm very impressed. Every game that I played handled exactly the way it should, and the interface was nice as well. All in all, a quality product. It's nice to see a developer actually take some pride in a classic compiliation. Keep up the great work!

I'd be interested in Waterworld, what are you asking?

Moonsweeper is one of the best on the system. Other than that, see above

That, and they really make good conversation pieces. Everyone I show them to laughs 'cuz they're so huge and ridiculous. Oh, and they play ok too. Be warned though, the battery life is only 3 hours or so, so don't plan on any marathon sessions

Todays best: 56500 I had a friend over who just happened to have his camera with him, so I actually have a screenshot. I'm glad this game was picked, keilbaca. I never really gave it a second thought after popping it in once or twice. I thought it a second rate pac-man hack/clone, but the actual gameplay involves a lot more hunting and waiting in ambush, than running around the maze which makes it pretty fun, and a bit suspensful, especially when the speed ramps up. Even with the lousy flicker.

Overlord is a fun (and difficult) turn based/real time hybrid. You might try and find that. Desert Commander is my fav though.

I just got it. I like the game, but so far, the 5200 sticks don't seem to like climbing ladders much. I'm sure it would be better with a Redemption adapter. Usually I really like the 5200 sticks, but some games just don't work that well with them, and this is one.

Yeah, I know a guy who has a spare dual joystick holder. I'm trying to get in touch with him to work out a trade. I just picked up Robotron as well, so that makes it even more important. Just out of curiosity, what are you folks' high scores on this game?

Anyone else here think this game rocks? I picked up a 5200 about a year ago and now have a nice library of games, but this one took me by surprise. It's kind of like berzerk crossed with venture, with a little robotron thrown in for fun. Good stuff. I just wish I had one of those dual joystic holders

I've been following this debate on several posts, so I'll throw in my two cents worth. The reason I still play Atari thirty years later has nothing to do with nostalgia (ok, maybe a little ), and more to do with gameplay. I play classic games because they're, umm, you know, FUN. If a copied game doesn't have the proper timing or responsiveness that the original has (and if a classic game doesn't have gameplay, it ain't got jack), then it's probably not worth much. In my book, if you are going to put atari games on nes-on-a-chip hardware, fine, but at least take the time to make sure they actually PLAY well. The problem is that Atari/Inforgrames, Jakks etc just want to make a quick buck. They figure (usually correctly) that most folks won't even notice the difference. It's only the people who care that do. Ah well. I guess I'll just have to suffer and go and play the real thing

Well, I'm up to 34900 now. I've found that hanging around in an out-of-the-way area of the maze (i.e no long open spaces) and waiting for the worlings to come to you works pretty well. Often you can just repeatedly fire in one direction and just wait for the worlings to run into your shot. The worlings also tend to take certain patterns through the maze, which helps as well. At least it helps when you are not having seizures from the dreadful flicker. Ye gods, but this game make Pac Man look like good on that front.

Well, I'm game if you are willing to accept my scores without a picture, (as I don't have a digital camera). I'm new around here, but this HSC thing is a great way to remember games you have but have forgotten (like WoW here) I gave it a few tries, and my best score is 26100. I'll keep at it.

Yeah, N vs S is fun. I used to play it back in the day. If you like these kinds of games, try Desert Commander. DC really IS advanced wars. Almost the exact same gameplay, though the AI can be a bit weak at times. It's great for two players. Conflict is ok as well. Give 'em a shot.

I found a IIgs Woz edition mint awhile back, and spent a year (on and off) transferring software from the net down to actual floppies. It was a pain in the neck. I used a pc program called Transmac to transfer the disk images to a mac disk, transfer that to my ancient 68k mac, which had the Apple II disk extension installed, and then transferred it over to the apple and wrote the file to an actual disk. I now have just about everything ever made for the system. I've actually found a couple of other IIgs since, so I have a nice collection of peripherals and disk drives. It's a very sleek little classic computer, and I love using it. The only thing I am missing is a hard drive interface. Oh, and the games are great too. I guess you can call me a convert