Derek

Hi, Tubular Gearhead. I have had this cartridge sitting in my bookcase pile of games I don't like for easily six years. I played it twice on the day I got it. The flicker/graphics/sound effects all suck, IMHO. I will pop it into the Atari and make sure it still works. I have no idea how paypal works as I have never bothered to try and sell something as I have only had games to sell in the $10 rarity range, not worth the bother. The label on this is spotless, though you can see where the two screws are. I have no box or manual as I think it came from Value Village which only seems to have loose carts. I scanned the cart and hope that the attached image shows up for you to see. scan0001.pdf

I would have been happy if you had released a version that simply removed that god damn orange border. What was the point of that? Why did Atari add that when it had nothing to do with the original game? When I first got this cart (as part of a big boxload from O'Shea's, back when they first started clearing out and had copies of everything they had listed, I bought one of each, wish I had bought two of each.) Anyway, I turned it on and thought it had a nice attract screen, then I hit start. No background stars and and a pointless and ugly orange border. Why? I hate to say anything critical as I scraped through programming back in grade 10 in 1987. I have never endured anything more frustrating as I do not think like a computer, and if I wasn't a guy I would have burst into tears and run out of the room. Instead I did the guy thing and got angry. I managed to get a D minus for the year, but I hated every second of the class and dreaded going each day as it was soooo frustrating. That said, I am envious of anyone who even remotely understands what is going on inside a game cartridge and can make changes to improve it $P, $G geez, it makes me stressed to even think of all that stuff. I didn't get it then, barely passed the required course. That really annoyed me, it was required. If I didn't pass it I had to take it again in Grade 11, then there was the risk of not having enough credits to get the fuck out of high school in three years and having to come back in 1990 to get that one credit. It was so close. I passed with 62%. Small wonder I ever touched a computer again, having one come so very close to me having to endure a fourth year of high school. So, your improvements on 2600 Galaxian to me are very impressive, perhaps you could dumb down an answer as to why the rows of attackers are so far apart as compared to the arcade game where they are close, and a fired missile might have hit something in another row instead of causing a delay as your fire drifted up that large gap between rows before you could fire again. Perhaps someone can work on the 2600 ms. pac man game and get rid of the ghost flicker, use more K and have more sounds possible at the same time, change the light blue background so it is not 95% the same color as the ghosts during the time you can eat them?! Of if someone would enjoy playing a game that is FUBAR, I could take another crack at programming and release my efforts towards improving ms. pac man. Mmmmm, bad idea.

Hi, I just had to ask where you got the idea that Time Warp could garner $120? I scanned my cartridge, and since I am aware of no other Atari 2600 cartridge with this name, I assume this is the one you are referring to? True, in some areas Zellers cartridges are rather rare, but $120 rare?! I'd happily part with it. That's a lot of weekend beer money:) I seem to have rather a lot of difficulty attaching pics, they usually appear as a link instead of a picture right there on my reply. I don't see any other way to do it besides hit attach this file... time warp.pdf

Maybe if one was drunk and stoned then passing endless cars leading to no goal at all would be interesting. I found it boring. Is there a point to passing 200+ cars then four flags wave and you do the same thing again? How is that interesting? Anyway, thanks for your reply. I didn't mean for the whole thing to be one giant paragraph. As I stated in the final sentence I was attempting to attach pictures, which did not show up as part of my post, but as downloadable files, not what I was trying for. I copied and pasted when it fucked up (as I knew it would) and I didn't want to type the whole thing in again, thus I just left it as the blob it pasted as. My printer saves all scans as Adobe files, so I opened paintbrush and saved the Circus file you wanted as a jpg, though it takes up the whole screen. circus.pdf

I may have double posted this as the first time it told me my topic title had to be longer than two characters, ahh, I think it is. Looks like seven words to me. Anyway, I bought a Logitech Dual Action joystick, just like the one I had that died for no reason, and four Atari carts as it rained Thursday night, so I decided to go to get groceries and pop into Value Village, which rarely has anything Atari oriented, and if they do, it is the extremely common stuff. They had some Atari stuff, so I bought it, and I knew what Circus was, though it had a different front picture than the Zellers one that I have. It is the same game with a different picture on the front of the cartridge. Enduro is just that, the crappy Activision game which had no point, you just pass cars and occasionally the season changes. Boring. But this cartridge seems to match the Taiwan/cooper one on Atariage's rarity guide. So it is not a Zellers title? It certainly looks like one. Tank City, I assumed was going to be either Battlezone or Combat. It is Sega's Thunderground with three tanks that scroll up the screen instead of Sega 1983. The rarity guide credits it to Action Hi-tech. The fourth cartridge is Space Tunnel. I expected something lame, and was not disappointed in that respect. What a shitty game. But, it is rare enough to get a ? mark on the rarity column here. It is credited to BitCorp. on the screen, and knowing how crappy their other games are, this one does not disappoint. Annoying sound effects, boring game, repetitive game play. It has the picture that matches the Taiwan/Cooper label, so is this cartridge from overseas and made to look like a Zellers cartridge and sold at some other store back in 1983? I have tried to attach a scan, but have never been able to make that work, so if it isn't there, I'll try again. Anyone know anything more about these carts? They are all in very good shape, though loose. Thanks for any thoughts. They are interesting looking carts, but since I already had three of the four games, and the fourth, Space Tunnel, sucks, I really feel like I wasted my money. Why on earth was it called Space Tunnel? You are, I guess, in a downward travelling tunnel, with the same four boring enemies that come along while you are trapped in the middle of the screen, you have no apparent goal, the four game variations are basically the same. ZZZZZ. One description of it was it was a Vanguard clone. NOT!!! Vanguard was a pretty good Atari cart, this is just pure boring crap, rare or not, it is crap. I'd still like to know a bit more about the four of them, as this one was apparently an actual Atari issued game in 1983?!?! Really, something this lame was issued by Atari at a time when things were falling apart and maximum fun and appeal were needed to try and bring things back to life, this is what was unleashed? Ick! So here I go with another attempt to attach a couple of scanned pics. RARE ATARI.pdf

I have no idea where you are going to find roms. I downloaded all that I could get my hands on around 1992, and kept 523 'working roms'that I thought were worth at least playing a second time, of course among this 523 were the obvious keepers like Ms. pac., Asteroids, and so on. I downloaded a couple dozen around February, though I can't remember where I found them. Most roms disappeared when there were some lawsuits regarding copyright. I recall for a few years links that claimed to have roms and none of them lead to successfully downloading anything. But I digress, that wasn't your question. Some games that I had seen once or twice, or not at all that I fire up quite regularly on MAME would include: Zzyzzyxx (what were they smoking when they named this?) Zektor (kind of a Space Duel rip off), WarpWarp, Wiping, Stratovox, Star Castle, Solar Fox, Robby Roto, Pac and Pal (never played this one anywhere but MAME), Juno First (fun game, what's with the name, I read the explanation and still don't get it!?),Challenger, Blaster, Armor Attack. Many games on my list have a 1 in the 'played' column, and for good reason as so many games were out to eat your quarter and not function any purpose beyond that which I could see. I played them once and remembered why they didn't get a second quarter out of my pocket, thus why I mentioned just some that I think fit the definition of uncommon which you seemed to be seeking, yet fit my idea of worth putting a few quarters into...

I have no problem with my collection of games that I play using MAME. I'd love to have a ms.pacman sitting in my living room. Even if I did, the original creators would not get a cent as the game would be used. Same goes for second hand stores. The original makers got a cut the first time around. Go home from a yard sale with some second hand books, records, atari carts that you may derive countless hours listening to and playing. R U doing something illegal? Technically yes. Reasonably no. How full would landfills be if when you were tired of some of your records, games, books, you threw them out so anyone else who wanted to listen to the Police while playing Asteroids had to go out and find a new sealed record and cartridge...This would also make buying a car second hand illegal as the initial makers got nothing from you reselling it, so the car would have to go to the crusher after the first owner wanted to drive something brand new. You are stealing that car just as much as you stole the second had Atari cartridge. Who didn't tape songs off the radio when they were a cash poor teen. You technically stole that song. But the radio station paid royalties each time they played it and you listened. So the only thing you stole, really, is the choice to listen to it again if you wanted to. Strictly following copyright laws would make this whole website (and many others) non-existent as nobody would have anything second hand for which no royalties were paid. If I deleted every mp3 ripped from a second hand tape or record, and deleted all the atari stuff I didn't break out of shrinkwrap back in 1982 and so forth, there would be very little to listen to or play, and no one here can disagree with that as we all have mostly second hand stuff for which the initial maker got zip from us enjoying these things, but they did get paid the first time around...

I remember being quite happy to get a free man at 10000, and that virtually ensured I'd get to enter my initials, though since they disappeared every time the game was turned off, having a top 10 players was quite anti-climactic. The links for this story explain nothing as they are links to sites you have to join to access, or so it appears as nothing much happened as I clicked on them hoping to see how anyone could amass so many free men to take food and bethroom breaks and score 4 million points? I always was frustrated by how the small ufo's fire almost always cost me a man, even if I tried to just cross the screen, thrusting at full throttle, that one pixes from the ufo always seemed to find your ship. Even seeing his fire coming toward you, there never seemed to be time to press the hyperspace and get out of the way, or blow up upon re-entering the screen after successfully hyperspacing out of harms way. That was supposed to be a possibility, seemed like 90% of the time pressing hyperspace resulted in you dying anyway...any way you look at it, 60 hours awake? doing the same thing? I watched the you whole 12 minute sped up you tube video of someone completing Ghosts'n'goblins, he made it look so easy. I can't make it two minutes into that game and I'm ready to set a bomb under it as repetition drives me nuts, and starting over every time you died was so annoying, so playing asteroids for 60 hours...geez. It would still be nice to watch a couple of the final minutes of this feat, as obviously asteroids doesn't get any harder after a certain point once you figure out how to evade the fast aimed missiles of the small ufo, key to surviving at this, as there is nothing else about the game that would kill you if you don't go mindlessly creating small fast rocks and destroy each one methodically, there is nothing else to cost you a man besides the small ufo's fast shots. So fatigue had to be the deal breaker causing 4 million and change to end it for these three guys who hold the records on asteroids.

Nice Odyssey 2 collection. UFO and the two kc munchkin titles I had back in 82, played a few of the others you offered, didn't really get what to do (Monkeyshines? Pick Axe Pete?) Hangman was another favorite, thus utilizing the keyboard, the only game that really did - till a yard sale in 1984 when mom sold the game system and dozen carts for $20. If your machine works, which you didn't mention that it does, it is a good fun value for $50 for someone near Idaho, as shipping it to me here in Eastern Canada would at least double the price. Nice to see one for sale with my three fave games for that system included. Geez, what was my mother thinking?? Her excuse as I flipped my lid when I came home and found it gone was; "I don't remember the last time I saw you play it, so I put it in the yard sale." ??? It was sitting attached to the downstairs tv when I went out that Saturday, clearly in use, my sister and I played with it all the time?!?! Anyway, my point to all this ranting, $50...such a small amount of money to let all that fun go...I'd far sooner have that system back and design some mazes for kc munchkin and spend a rainy early Spring afternoon playing them games again then have $50 come in...

After trying a few different options over the years, I've finally settled on using a PlayStation 2 controller connected to a USB adapter. It gives me more than enough buttons for the games that I play, it's a good solid controller, and it certainly wasn't expensive to buy: about $12 for the controller and $5 for the adapter. Thanks for that, though I have no idea where to go to buy a Playstation 2 controller, or an adapter. Even if I find them, how does the ps2 controller communicate with the computer? I have never used a joystick that didn't have an installation disc. Does that come with a ps2 controller? Please excuse my ignorance about the new style controllers as the 7800 is the newest console that I own and the Logitech came from Future Shop six years ago after simply asking them for a decent joystick to use on my computer to play old style games. The clerk was no older than the games I wished to be able to play on the computer...sigh...getting old, so old

After six years of less than stellar performance my Logitech Wingman joystick has suddenly become invisible to my computer. I reinstalled it, still does not appear on the controllers list. The red light on it is out, switching to other USB ports makes no difference. I guess it just died in the night. Since I was never particularly impressed with it especially on games with corners, Lady Bug, Ms. Pac, etc., as it never reliably steered where you pressed, I'd like to know what others here who play games on the computer, the old style games using emulators, have had happy game playing success with. One can get really fancy with ones that actually match joystick and buttons like you remember from standing in front of a game back in the day. Are they worth having? I'd like to stick with something small like the Logitech controller versus the Hotrod or the big black one whose name I can't think of, starts with a X, and has two joysticks and a truck load of buttons. That is overkill for the space I have to work with. Thanks for any helpful thoughts everyone.

Now that I know there is no 'end' to Xevious, I don't feel any need to ever play it again. The exploding black balls, and the fact that you had to start over and see all the same stuff, only to die again when you got to the black balls. Really, they exploded into about 20 seperate fast moving deadly projectiles, and your ship slogged around the screen as though it was immersed in molasses. You had no chance of evading your demise especially since they appeared out of nowhere and detonated right near your man who was busy trying to move through the invisible molasses that impeded his movement on the screen. Strategy X, with the fuel that runs out faster than anyone could possibly have a chance to replenish it. Crater Raider, so fucking hard to steer, even in MAME where I could change the sensitivity. Many other games I could mention with steering sensitivity being the ruining factor. For example, anything by Cinematronics, jeez, did they have an allergy to joysticks? All of their games could have been so much better with joystick instead of left, right, thrust, fire, and having the left and right send you wildly in circles unless you gently tapped them. Boxing Bugs and Solar Quest, no one can argue that they were impossible to steer gently enough to find the game any fun. Sanritsu's Dream Shopper, you just seem to walk into black holes and die??? Taito's Electric YoYo, basically impossible to steer as things would move into your path and you had no recourse to change your direction, thus you died every time. Any of the Stern games with the one pixel enemy fire that was virtually invisible, especially if you weren't playing the machine in a completely dark room, Minefield and Rescue come to mind. Berzerk could have been fun, but Stern's greed to finally have a quarter eater ruined it. Did anyone ever score 10000 and get a free man? I thought that was laughable as after three boards the robots shooting at lightning speed in 16 directions and you walking slowly despite feet moving at 100 mph...just insane. I know I have said it in previous posts about games being annoyingly hard, but really, what were the test groups playing versus the insanely difficult to stay alive games that were unleashed on us in the arcade?...Anything from SNK, other than Vanguard needed far more refining toward playability. I think after sifting through MAME for the games that I didn't immediately delete, I could easily add others. Joust, too hard to steer, as was Bubbles, Defender had a certain amount of annoying 'drift' to the controls as well. Time Limit wich doesn't even appear now in MAME, (it's not on the list of games on the version I am using, anyway,) though I know that it only got one quarter out of me, and playing it using MAME, I wasted no time in deleting the rom before I got myself pissed off again...Such an absolutely shitty excuse for a game. You hardly had time to focus on the screen and find your man before the shots of the enemy appearing magically out of thin air and shooting you quickly ate up your three men. I'm sure the game was over in 15 seconds. I have no idea whether there was a second screen. There really was no need as no one could have made it to the top of the first screen as there was no way to evade the enemies who just appeared out of nowhere. Many more games I could pick apart, as I just don't get how every game that was programmed was subjected to test groups to see if it was ready, and still so much total shit made it to the arcades...

December 2008, MAME version 32b-036, 523 working roms. Some don't have sound, others have wrong colors, but apart from Moon Shuttle, which has yet to be successfully emulated, Astro Blaster, which regularly crashes part way through a game, and Junior Pac, which simply won't work, this version has been the one that I stayed with. I have no interest in much past the games of 1987, when the arcade experience, that is new games appearing at an arcade, was no more. Really, expecting an emulator to run everything you ever played as a wee one in an arcade? All for free? The best piece of advice I can give/agree with, as I think someone already suggested it, is to copy the version of MAME which seems to run most of what you want it to, along with the ROM's onto a cd. Then when you try other versions of MAME and the message pops up that older version of MAME is detected on your computer, it won't screw that version up when you accept using the new settings associated with whatever version you are trying out now. I haven't found a way to make the old one continue to work and try a new version. MAME seems to not have any interest in getting along with previous versions of itself, so if you don't back up what works, when you try a newer version, what you had before won't work like it did.

One of today's topics mentioned playing certain games was as much fun as getting lost in Sears. That somehow clicked something in my head and memories I had not had since actually being there in 1982, came back. Sears, here in Saint John, NB, Canada, had a room like the one you walk into to listen to different speakers nowadays at Future Shop, and in that room beyond the still contemporary floor model tv's, were the most popular game systems of the day. Atari, Coleco, Intellivision, and Odyssey 2 all hooked up to tv's and there were a few cartridges for each system which were attached to the wall by the same threaded cable as bicycle locks with a screw through the cartridge so you couldn't walk off with a cart. I think that the joysticks also had this cable attached to them as the room was unsupervised and I recall it was hard to play the games as the joysticks were quite stiff to use with the theft prevention cable attached to them. The consoles were held down in their four corners so you could reset the games and change cartridges. I don't recall being in this room more than a couple more times as people still beat the joysticks, and broke the slide switches off the 2600's, and I assume that the rooms were decommissioned thereafter, though I don't really remember as I didn't remember any of this till seeing the getting lost in Sears reference and being flashed back to that game room hoping it would be hours and hours before my parents would be done shopping and come and drag me away from the fun. Sigh...

Some interesting moments and I agree, it is sooo hard to pinpoint one defining moment. I can only narrow it down to three somewhat related times. First, having a girl I liked as a mere 12 year old squeezing close to me as I got farther in Ms. Pac Man than anyone else around here could (17 boards). Second, getting KC Munchkin for the Odyssey 2 for Christmas 1982 as up until that I was quite annoyed that my main birthday present in August was the Odyssey 2 machine with a couple of games that I didn't really like. UFO was the other cartridge under the tree. Quite a fun rip off of Asteroids, as fun to watch your man blow up as it was to play the game. We played hangman a lot that Christmas, though I don't remember if that was a specific cartridge or just a game on a cartridge...The third 'moment' came in the summer of 1996 when I finally found an Atari 2600 at a giant 200+ vendor yard sale event in Sussex NB. A game console, two joysticks, paddles, tv switch, and seven cartridges including ms. pac(!)in a nice storage case. There was no price so I asked him what he wanted...he paused for a few seconds and suggested $7. I was thinking he would say something like 'how about $40?' That in itself would have made me happy, thus I managed to keep my surprise hidden and handed him a $10 bill and since I already had the whole pile of stuff near me, I told him to keep the difference. He then asked me if I wanted the boxes that the system and games came in. It was really getting hard to keep a straight face. I took it all and practically floated back to the car and could not wait to gather everyone else up and go home, as there really wasn't anything that could improve on that find after searching for many years to find a 2600 and Ms. Pac having missed out on both in the early 80's. I played three of the carts earlier tonight and thought back to that day, nice to share this memory with whoever is reading this today 14 1/2 years later. Geez, it seems like about four summers ago...so three moments, thats the best I can compress it into.

Reading through this entire thread, no one has placed the blame where it really belongs. It is the postal service who runs your package over high speed conveyor belts flinging it at high speeds onto yet another pile redirecting it closer to your home. Then it tumbles onto another pile, another conveyor belt, another violent fling onto another pile. Back when O'Shea's first offered their vast aquisition of 7800 and 2600 carts, I ordered a bunch and only one corner of the shipping bundle was a bit crushed in. It looked like the kind of dent that happens when something is dropped through the air to a pile of other stuff, or other stuff had fallen quite a ways to land on my mail. Not O'Shea's fault. The cartridges were packed adequately to withstand travel. Things labeled "Do not bend!" are always folded in two when they reach your mailbox and are then jammed in, or left with the plastic ripped if it happens to be raining that day. If it is not raining, then the book, or magazine will be simply stuffed into your mailbox. Junk mail will always be neatly placed in your mailbox with the lid closed and an expected article that fits in the box will be beat to death. If it won't fit, then you'll get a message to come pick it up at the post office where you will find your package somewhere between damaged and something that the dog threw up, and the clerk will present it to you as though there is nothing wrong with their service. Just some thoughts, as it is really not the person mailing it who is at fault. I remember subscribing to the magazine FHM, now defunct, and each month it arrived folded in half and squished into my mail box even though it said "Do not bend!" in big black letters across the plastic bag it was in, which seemed to always be ripped open, only when it was wet outside...

I have a small collection of tabletop games and two that stopped working years ago, I have not had the heart to toss in the electronics recycling bin. Entex Stargate, I was never very good at it, but it had loud, neat sound effects and was some fun, and as time went on, nostalgic, but it's screen display disappeared, just sound, then after I turned it on a few more times hoping that the display would come back, there was nothing but a power hum, static sound from the speaker, no game sounds, no visuals. I had never taken it apart, never been out in the rain, cold, dropped, it just stopped working. Same with Entex Super Cobra, which I thought was a pretty decent port of the arcade, given the limitations of such a small screen, being a tabletop, etc. I played it a million times, then one day it counted 1,2,3,4, like it always did to choose a level to start, but suddenly pressing start at any time just made the # blink slightly. Just like Stargate, it had seen nothing but love. Both have been in a box in the baby barn subject to whatever temperature the winter brings for years now, after sitting for years beside the ones that continued to work, but since I couldn't play them, I eventually decided to stop dusting them and pack them away. Anybody ever got an Entex, or any other tabletop game to work again after they inexplicably stopped functioning?

Dragon stomper said: "I can't remember the game, but it's an Elevator Action-like game where you are a cop. MAME doesn't emulate it perfectly, but it emulates it enough to show how bad this obscure game is. It's too easy to die, and it spawns robbers at you so frequently, you have barely any time to react." That piece of crap was called Time Limit, and the limit was obviously 7 seconds for each quarter you foolishly inserted. You didn't even have time to focus on the screen, see where your man was, and try to figure out what you were supposed to do before your first death. A truly crappy game which makes one wonder if anyone played these before they were put into cabinets and sent to arcades. Who could possibly squeeze the trigger on Satan's Hollow fast enough to stay alive and not steer haphazardly as you tried to fire fast enough to have any chance. Then the swooping birds become mostly invisible. As if it wasn't hard enough already! I liked Star Castle, but once you crossed 10000 points you might as well just walk away. If you have managed to destroy him half a dozen times you'll have a small chance of making 12000 points, as the sparks are so agressive that you can't do anything but hold your finger down on the thrust button and scroll off and on the screen. There is no way to do anything productive as their speed leaves no time for you do acheive anything, but it was the closest that Cinematronics came to getting it right, with their insistence on using buttons only, which made everything harder to steer. Choose your direction, then seperately press another button to make your man move in that direction. I hope that some day someone will get inside the code of say, Bagman, and make him move faster, get rid of the timer, allow you to fire without the enemy becoming impossible to deal with. One might finish the first board without the timer, with it I can't see how anyone could even walk around the three screen board and collect all the money bags if that was all you had to do, that is, there are no little klondike guys that seemed to always be right there even if you just left the screen and they were on the far other side, immediately scroll back and there they are. I only played this game once. That was enough. Watched others try their luck. Many feet left scuffs on the front as most people booted the game after it basically stole their quarter with its totally disappointing game play. Then again, it was a Stern game and they only came close to a playable game once with Super Cobra, and even that had the one pixel ememy fire that was near impossible to see. Universal's Lady Bug frustrated me big time as well as it was soooo picky about pushing up at just the right time to actually go up, or left, etc., push up too soon and you simply were killed by whatever was on your tail as you weren't in the exactly perfectly right place for up to work, and by the time you realized this, you were dead.

To answer S1500: "I can't remember the game, but it's an Elevator Action-like game where you are a cop. MAME doesn't emulate it perfectly, but it emulates it enough to show how bad this obscure game is. It's too easy to die, and it spawns robbers at you so frequently, you have barely any time to react." This disaster was called Time Limit. Makes one wonder if some companies skip having anyone actually try out their game for playability. This was impossible. You died within five seconds of starting the game, guaranteed. Who knows what the point was as you started over, and died again seconds later as the enemies just appeard out of nowhere and you were dead. There's a big difference between labeling a game difficult and calling it just plain impossible. Super Zaxxon qualifies as impossible as no one can even focus their eyes on the landscape flying by let alone play the game with that big clunky joystick with the fire button on the stick making your accuracy suck as you cannot steer while trying to furiously fire with the same hand, your arm muscles just won't do it. Cinematronics ruined their games in a similar way using buttons instead of a joystick. Rip Off could have been fun, but was impossible to steer with four directional buttons and a seperate thrust button. Why not use a joystick and have your man move in the direction you are pushing? Stern had many games that could have been fun, many were made too hard by having to stop moving in order to fire,(Berzerk and Tazz-Mania) or having enemy fire be one pixel on the screen, virtually impossible to see or avoid (Rescue, Minefield, Lost Tomb) Even using MAME, maximum men, and the 'easy' setting, they were still miles too hard to stay alive with slow joystick response, tiny enemy fire. Sun released some stinkers such as Kangaroo with its crappy over sensitive collision detection, and Route 16 with the delayed joystick reaction, and having to find yourself on the screen, meanwhile the enemies moved in and killed you before you could locate your self. Crap, pure crap. Lady Bug could have been fun, but having to line up your character perfectly to turn instead of having it take the next right turn if you were pushing right on the joystick ruined it. You died before you could realize that you weren't perfectly lined up to take the next turn, boom, you're dead. Then again, Universal ruined most of their games with their slow clunky joystick response, though crap like JumpBug by Rock_ ola or SNK's Joyful Road, were equally crappy with their slow joystick response times. The most impossible game award IMHO has to go to Sanritsu's Dream Shopper. What the hell were you supposed to do? Almost invisible holes all over the place that you stepped into and died while trying to figure out what the hell was the point of the game. Enemies that are faster than you, you stop to turn over parts of the maze, meanwhile they just walk over and kill you. If you happen to flip over enough of these squares without running out of men you get to see the first actual board where you seem to be moving up toward a house at the top of the screen, but you can't stop moving forward if an enemy gets in your way as you have to move to the next crossroad before changing direction, meanwhile they move wherever they want and of course, you die before you can steer out of their way. Amazing that even one ROM of something this bad survived to be emulated in MAME. Even more mindless is why I fire up any of these every now and again. I guess I just can't fathom how games that could have been fun were made basically impossible. Nobody puts a second quarter in a game where they die before they can even figure out what the point of the game is, or find their character on the screen. Just my 25 cents worth.

How could one ever narrow this down to five games. There were so many that were simply too F#$#$ng hard to stay alive long enough to not automatically get pissed off ie, anything by SunSoft. Cybernoid. Even with game genie cheat of endless lives I still found it irritating, as it took forever to get to the end, which in itself was anti-climactic. given that no human could ever have gotten 2% there without the endless lives cheat. Spy Hunter was impossible, and with endless lives you could see that it really never went anywhere. Was there an ending? I remember taking Mario 2 down to the basement and letting it meet Mr. Hammer. WTF were they thinking with the sloppy controls, the coasting after you stopped pushing on the control, the delayed reaction after pressing A or B? Pure garbage. It makes you wonder what happened as every game was played extensively by test groups before each were approved for production. I'd like to meet the group that thought Cybernoid was fun and playable when you instantly died upon drifting from one screen to another before your eyes could even see where your character appeared on the next screen. Another game that met with Mr. Hammer. I'm sure that if I had a list of game names, I would remember ones that pissed me off more but I only have the games that I enjoyed, all these crappy ones were quickly removed from my gaming life. The rather rare Tengen (I think) cart of Pac-Man was pretty awful as it had the top of the screen chopped off and took about 123 screens before it sped up enough to become playable. Again, what were the test groups doing? There were several side-scrolling games where the flicker made things temporarily invisible, and you seemed to die for no reason, but you had run into something that was simply taking its turn as one of 16 sprites appearing one by one on the screen, and oops! you die! Doesn't matter that it was invisible! How fun!

Kiwasabi said: "By the way, has anybody played the Intellivision version of Commando? I'd be interested in checking it out." Check it out if it is $2 or less. The only port of this that is playable is the 7800 version. All the others are just like the arcade, where you died for no apparent reason before you really got to look around and see what you were to do to play the game. I played the Intellivision cart three times then whipped it across the room. Enemy bullets that are almost the same color as the background was one obvious piss-me-off factor. Making a game this hard to stay alive, that has no continue feature, and no setting to give yourself 60 men, so you have a small chance...then there is the maddening disc-pad, you hardly ever steer or shoot where you think you are pressing. Waste no time looking for this INTV cart, just play it using the 7800 emulator. That is the only version that I found to be at least a little bit fun and do-able without dying every five seconds for seemingly no reason. Most INTV carts are ruined by having your character move toooo sllooowww. Even on level four most games move like your man is pushing through molasses. Out of all the ones I have had, these are the ones I kept, hardly enough to justify the space the whole deal takes up. Lock 'n' chase, Atlantis, Burgertime, Demon Attack, Space Battle, Pitfall, Loco-Motion, Bump 'n Jump, Venture, DK Junior, Beauty and the Beast, and Advanced D and D. These are all quite good. Many others got re-donated to second hand charity stores. Commando got the hammer smash. Mission X is ridiculously easy and seems to go nowhere, and Skiing is ok, Nova Blast is a lame Defender clone which also seems to have no point. Why I have kept those last three, no idea, I guess because they aren't too hard, and steer where you press with that damn circle. One of the absolute worst INTV carts is white label Pac-Man. It is sooo slooowww! You have to clear about 14 boards before it speeds up to the first board of the arcade version. The top is always missing off the screen, the sound is off and steering with the circle, you go where you think you are pushing about half the time. When you consider the INTV was over $200 with tax, and carts were in the $35 to $45 range back in 1982, it is amazing that there are any games left to buy 27 years later, as so many of them sucked, and you could try them in store (at least here you could) before buying a cart. How did the ones that were impossible to steer, or stay alive get past testing groups, then past trying a game in store, and then parting with $50 before you had it home??? I crazy glued a one inch wooden dowel to the direction circle, and that has made the games that I kept playable, at least you can steer it! I haven't played this system in at least 18 months, time to hook it up again, with the few carts I though were good.

I can't imagine what the allure is in owning, say, a $300 Avalon Hill Out of Control, if it is what you need to complete your Atari 2600 collection, when it is such a pathetic excuse for a game. Like many others, if it isn't any fun to play, why have it? Rare or not, I have simply donated cartridges to Value Village when I didn't find them to be fun. Trying to trade or sell them is far more trouble than it is worth, as I found out when I first became an AtariAge member and had people flaming me, ready to launch WW3 over a cartridge. So, what is the satisfaction in paying big money for a sucky game, just to complete a collection. Spending thousands of dollars on crappy games? I don't get it! I get having a collection of games that you love, while your mp3 player shuffles appropriate 80's tunes as you play. That makes sense. That's how I like to re-visit this era, favorite 80's tunes with favorite games. That' fun. Paying $300 for a completely crappy game? That makes no sense to me, so somebody please spell it out to me:)

Laser Gates, aka, Laser Volley, a Zellers $4.97 cartridge back in the day, here in Canada. I posted a few months ago asking if anyone had gotten to an ending for this. After going through two of the 6507 point gates the speed doubles. I got through one more and then was almost out of the "destination time" counter when my now soaked hands dropped the stick, with one shield hit left, I was dead before I could pick up the 2600 stick. Is there an ending? I think with memory limitations, no matter what you did, the multi-colored 'end' is all you would get no mattter how how well you played. My score was 65000 and change at that point.

While Hypereye was busy pointing out Artlover's mis-use of 'than' versus 'then', a personal peeve of mine as well, I hope it was good natured as Hypereye doesn't seem to know the difference between your and you're or he would have picked on this part of Artlover's post: "I'm surprised your happy with them being in Alabama," Your is posessive, as in, your keys, your car, not you're car, you're being a contraction of 'you are'. Now if we could get down to a real grammar/speech problem, people saying "like" every third word in their real world conversations. That really drives me nuts. Where did that come from? It isn't just teenagers anymore, it is like an airborne disease as I hear adults putting 'like' endlessly in their conversation. So annoying.

I was reading the Bagman thread, and they mentioned using cheats in MAME. What are these? Something you download? Something that is within MAME that you activate? The only ones that I ever encountered didn't work, the speed button that you could toggle on, on some versions of Ms. Pac for example, none ever responded. I'd like to try Bagman where you had at least a remote chance. The actual arcade game got one quarter from me back in 1983. I remember booting the game frustrated that Stern had come up with another good idea and ruined it by making it too [email protected]#ing hard! Think: Lost Tomb, Tazzmania, Berzerk, another one with a Chopper and one pixel enemy fire which I can't remember the name of, but it was ruined by that! Who can see one pixel coming at you? That same feature took much of the fun out of Super Cobra, but at least that game was playable... Anyway, someone please explain how to use MAME cheats on some of these more impossible games. It would be fun to play them instead of remembering only how pissed I was that an eighth of my two dollar a week allowance was eaten in seconds by some of these impossibly frustrating games. Thanks!