Lord Thag

The Leisure Vision is just the Canadian rebranding of the Arcadia 2001, if memory serves. They carts are compatible. It's not like some of the South American/European/New Zealand systems that are software compatible, but have different pinouts.

It's always a good thing to find the courage to be your true self. You'll find plenty of support here.

This is one of those series I loved back in the day, but whose gameplay style I have a hard time sticking with these days. Great story, but the point and click RPG thing just isn't as fun to me as the modern, first person open world stuff like Fallout, Skyrim, Witcher and Breath of the Wild. Still, I hope this does well. It was the gold standard for DnD rpgs

Am I the only one waiting like an impatient 5 year old for this to show up in the AA store?

Awesome. Loved the original one. Sorta Robotron meets Binding of Isaac.

I wasn't big on either Nioh or Lords of Ragnar Lothrbrok, err, the Fallen :-P Both games felt like Dark Souls fan fiction. Playable but lacking the creative spark that makes the originals so good. I loved Demon Souls and DS1. DS 2 was ok, but not great, and DS 3 is brilliant, by far my favorite. Great games. I am less than enchanted with Sekiro though. It's extra hard, and it forces you to play one specific way. Stealth is almost secondary too, as it never works on any of the bosses. It's very well done, but I find it not all that enjoyable. The DS games were tough but fair. Sekiro feels tough and cheap, a lot of the time, even though I can always figure it out and get farther in. You're also constantly thrown against cheap minibosses, which breaks up the flow of exploration. I can play it, and I'm most of the way through, but I have to say... probably will never t ouch it again when I beat it. This one was their bridge too far.

Try the Museum of HP Calculators. They are super knowledgable and have a sub form for non-calc PCs https://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/

Must have missed that one, thanks for the heads up.

Very interesting. Always kinda liked the IIc LCD option. Would have been a cool option to have, back in the day. You're on a roll, Curt.

It's really neat seeing all these cards turn up. Always loved the idea of the 1090. I'm actually surprised something like this hasn't been created by hobbyists, as we have some extremely talented creators in the Atari 8-bit scene.

Resources, I would imagine. The later games were always in the 'this probably shouldn't have been attempted on a 2600' category. Programming time/space were spent on actually getting the whole game in there and less on Activision 'flair'. The games that had that signature look were usually much less ambitious in scope.

I had one of these in Mario Bros, I think it was. Used to drool over it endlessly, hoping Santa would award me one of those shiny new Atari consoles. I did eventually end up with a 7800. This and the old green catalog with the weird artwork were always my favorites to obsess over as a kid.

Certainly valid concerns, but just for reference the Quest is sold out everywhere, and the devs of Super Hot have stated that sales of that game are up 300% from the Rift launch. Time will tell of course, but it's off to a very good start. And I don't feel the need for a pc connection either. The quest VR experience is pretty great out of the box. That said, I agree that software support will make or break this thing. Still... Oculus is owned by Facebook. We may all hate them, but that's a lot of marketing power behind this thing.

I know what you mean. The community (meaning the wider circle of 'retro gamers' not specifically Atariage) has gotten... well, it's gotten just as rude, intolerant and draining as the rest of social media has. A sign of the times. I've also had those people really drain my motivation to be involved. What I do, when I feel like this, is get back to what I loved about the hobby: the games, friends, and good times. I invite some friends over for a game night, drag out a couple of consoles, fire up the smoker, and we all just chill, eat and have a good time. I find that renews my appreciation. Dealing with online/in person drama over egos, entitlement and whatnot kills it.

Yeah, Robo Recall is on it, it's on my list to get once I'm done with Superhot and Beat Saber. Does it have a lot of replay-ability? I actually much prefer this headset to the Rift/PSVR/Vive. I've used the others, but the high end PC requirements(Rift/Vive), Crappy controllers (PSVR) and more importantly huge wire tethers (all) really doesn't make me want to come back much. Being able to jump around, dodge, duck etc. with full 6dof without worry or tether may make you look like an idiot to an observer, but man, is it ever fun. It gives you this sensation of actually being in a virtual space. It's game changing, or at least, it is for me. As to Facebook... yeah I hear that. However, Oculus, while owned by Facebook is extremely transparent about their privacy policy and information usage. It's all up front when you set up the headset.

Anyone else get one of these? I've been waiting for awhile for a VR device that had sufficient power to provide a good game/app experience, 6 degrees of freedom motion, and not have any cords or tethers or require a high end gaming PC. This... is finally it. It's pretty game changing, and I've been underwhelmed with VR previously. It allows you to 'draw' your free room space on the floor when you start it up, which prevents you from moving outside of your open space while playing (a holodeck-like grid will appear and then turn red as you get closer to the edge). This is a really neat feature, as it allows you to custom-define any space you may be using it in, and once you do, you can stop worrying about collisions. It works very well, allowing you to actually move around, dodge bullets etc. while playing games. The experience is pretty amazing. Tilt Brush, google's 3d drawing app is one of those things you experience and think 'this... changes everything'. You basically walk around in a space an draw with your hands in the air, creating incredible 3D art you literally walk in and around. Without a tether, it's a whole different experience. Want to draw a camp fire? Kneel down on the ground and draw one. I've never experienced creativity in an open space like this. Games like Super Hot are also just nuts, the experience of 'actually being there' creates a visceral experience I have not had duplicated anywhere else. We've had a lot of crappy VR solutions over the years. This isn't one of them. Don't think I'll even use a gym again either. Some of the games are fantastic workouts you can't put down. Anyone else take the plunge? This thing is a direct competitor to my xbox and switch now.

Outside the folks that restore this stuff, there's quite a bit of stuff you can do through remakes/emulators, like PiDP-11, which recreates one of the old 'blinkenlights' PDP panels. The page also has a ton of links to software, OS etc, which would probably get you started on what you could, potentially, do with your setup. https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11 I know people have replaced the old storage options with SD card interfaces, or using a PC to emulate the drive storage. The latter is probably your best bet, as you can download/tweak the software right on the box the PDP is reading from. https://www.ak6dn.com/PDP-11/TU58/tu58em/ Neat project! Wish I had the hardware knowhow to do something similar.

Yeah, this potentially could be interesting. I hope it is, honestly. The MyArcade full size units need extra modding to be usable, so there is certainly room in the market. But I've had too many quality issues with Atgames (and to be fair, Hyperkin) over the last few years to buy it at launch. If it's solid, and reliable, I may look into getting one further down the line. Too many promises that haven't quite been realized, though from your comments, it sounds like the company has acknowledged that and is working on it, so that's good to hear. I'm hoping that at some point, one of these new retro console manufacturers takes a page from 8bitdo's book. All their third party controllers are of high quality, solid construction and reliability, and decent prices. That's all anyone wants, really: for all these consoles/arcade machines to feel like they are well made, work as advertised, and for the company making them to release updates that fix bugs and issues.

I think a large part of the problem with this business model is that there is a large chunk of the gaming public that doesn't care about nerd merch/action figures/random plastic widgets (I don't). Lots of people who shop there never touch the stuff, according to the folks I know that work there. What's even more odd is that (at least in my local store) more shelf space is being devoted to random nicknacks than the actual games these days. I think they could make a go of it widening their net and including more nerd gaming beyond the video game stuff, but you can totally tell some suit is picking the current lineup out. A lot of it isn't great. Imagine if they carried fantasy flight's boardgame line, DnD/Star Wars tabletop RPGs (plus dice, mats etc) and other popular nerd board/card game lines in addition to console games? I can see that working. As is, there's no future in cheap game memorabilia as half the store, unless I'm much mistaken.

I always forget about that one. It is very good, kinda reminds me of Imagic's Nova Blast. I'll have to fire it up again.

For me, it's the style of game that the 2600 has. Let me explain what I mean. What we call video games these days tend to be large, involved, cinematic experiences or encapsulated worlds/sandboxes. They have nothing in common with what were called games before, things like chess checkers and bridge. Classic games were often simple, with few rules, and fairly abstract. The complexity came in due to the interaction of those rules, or through player skill. The Atari 2600 comes from a time when video games were still games in the classic sense: small, abstract, simple, but yet also very challenging and deep once you learned all the fine details involved in getting good. They were simple, but skill based. Not much different than horse shoes or rummy that way. I find it refreshing to go back to games like this. They make great quick entertainment, even if I do love the modern 'world in a box' stuff. Fun is fun, you know?

Windows is (finally) getting an actual terminal shell, Microsoft caved to demand. Might be able to actually write shell scripts in Windows finally: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/07/microsoft-unveils-new-open-source-windows-terminal/

Yeah, this was one of the games that made the Atari line my go to arcade gaming platform. This and Donkey Kong. There are quite a few ports of Defender, but few capture the frantic nature of the arcade, which the 8-bit port does very well. Very impressive how much stuff they had moving on screen at one time. Dropzone was less of a thing over here, due to the PAL coding making it super fast and hard in NTSC land. I've revisited the NTSC 'fixed' port as an adult, and come to love it in it's own right. My pipe dream is that someone will fix the slowdown in the Stargate proto someday. The sequel is so close to being great.

Interesting. I had no idea that there was a bad rom. It's a common cart, so I rarely load it of SD card and just pop the original cart in. And I agree, this is an excellent game. One of the best Daefender ports of the era, in point of fact. Cranked up to hard, it's on par difficulty wise as well.

Yeah, nice to see Infinite Space mentioned. That was an amazing, out of nowhere game that few remember now. I also like all the weird/glitched/hidden stuff in SOTN like the hidden area off to the left of the first hub. Hard to access, but cool that it's there.