FujiSkunk

Datasoft published the Atari 8-bit and Apple II disk versions of Zaxxon. Synapse published the C-64 disk version. There's a picture of a Datasoft catalog here which shows no entry for Zaxxon on the Commodore. Also, interesting read on the lawyer shenanigans. I rank that up there with Universal's (the movie studio, not the shell software company) attempts to bully Nintendo and Coleco into paying up for Donkey Kong, after they themselves got out of a similar lawsuit by successfully arguing King Kong is in the public domain. Thanks for sharing!

Yuck! Glad nothing worse happened, Thomas. I have a 40-ish-year-old-house with "floating ground" issues (lots of hum in audio equipment unless I use plugs without grounding prongs), and one outlet in particular would pop the circuit breaker rather frequently before we finally replaced it. Also, a previous owner did something odd with the phone system that left exactly one phone outlet working, at least until I dropped landline altogether. Sometimes I wonder if I'm going to come home to a fresh pile of ashes.

Wasn't Gamestop going to dip back in older consoles again? Supposedly they were even offering relatively good prices for systems they'd stopped carrying, like $25 for PS2's. I've yet to see any Gamestop actually make good on that promise, and that was one or two years ago.

That makes sense. The numbers have always been something of a minor scam anyway, since they define a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes, not the more accepted definition of 230 (1,073,741,824) bytes.

I got to play one back when they were fairly new. It was through an acquaintance of some sort that my mother would visit, possibly someone who was also selling Mary Kay cosmetics. Her daughter had a 5200, and I would always ask if I could play it with her. She had Pac-Man and Centipede, and I remembered being in awe of how great the games looked and sounded, especially Centipede. However, I also remember having a difficult time with the joysticks. Not an impossible time, mind you, and it's not something that really diminished my opinion of the console, but the controllers definitely took some getting used to. Joysticks, competition with the ColecoVision, lack of a compelling pack-in, artificial incompatibilities with Atari's 8-bit computers and other such facts are compelling points to explain why the 5200 didn't last as long as it did, but like others have said, there is really only thing you have to say: crash. You can nitpick whether the 5200 was more of a victim or more of a cause of the crash, but one way or another the crash happened because there were too many home video games, and when the dust cleared, all those games and all those consoles were gone from store shelves. Better controllers or a better pack-in wouldn't have stopped that.

200GB is an odd size for these cards, given how the companies have generally stuck to powers of two. I can't help but wonder if there was some situation like a batch of 256GB cards getting manufactured improperly that still proved usable up to 200GB.

Shot answer: Possible, but not easy. Longer answer: Some existing games could be ported easily enough as long as you allowed for compromises like vertically symmetric or mirrored playfields instead of horizontal, flickering when sprites lined up vertically instead of horizontally, and so forth. Other games that take heavy advantage of the 2600's "one scanline at a time" way of positioning and drawing graphics would require much heavier rewrites. Games ported from scratch of course would have an easier time of it, however, in all cases, scores and other such stats would have to be printed vertically down one side. It's either that or even more flickering and more compromises to the game engine. PS: Incidentally there are also at least one game each for the PS2 and the XBox 360 that can be configured for portrait-mode play: Raiden III for the PS2 and Raiden IV for the 360.

Dude, $35? At a Goodwill?? Check your fingers for pinpricks, I think you signed away something in blood when you weren't looking. Also... This is the gun. Now that I think about it, there's obviously no way they could sell something like this today, at least not without changing the colors to day-glow orange and yellow. It's a fun little piece, and like I said, it's fairly harmless as long as you're not trying to shoot someone's eye out. But it can look menacing to anyone who doesn't know any better.

I still have my "toy" gun from the '80s that fires rubber bullets. Not nearly powerful enough to injure, but a direct hit can still sting like a mother. I have to wonder if those are still sold anywhere, or even legal. Along the same lines, with the overkill that is certain Nerf guns nowadays, I wonder how long it'll be before they get regulated.

How old are you again?

I sprung for one of those "mini" NES Advantages the other day. Saw them at Fry's and figured, "Why not?" That's about the only way to get an "official" second controller at this point. Of course then I found a Wii Classic Controller at a thrift store soon after. Oh well. Both work like a charm.

Edited bump. uDraw Studio for the Wii, with case, instructions and the required uDraw GameTablet. Asking $10 for the set. Sold! Enter the Matrix for the PS2, Greatest Hits edition, still factory-sealed. Asking $5. Sold! The soundtrack to StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty on CD, still factory-sealed. Asking $5. Sold! Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation, with case but without manual. The case has a noticeable crack on the front cover, but this does not affect the paper insert. The back cover insert has the infamous "masterp ece" misprint. The discs are just about perfect. Asking $20. Sold! Frogger for the Atari 8-bits, complete in box. The top half of the box has a separated corner, visible in the pictures. Otherwise the packaging is in good shape for its age. Asking $10. Sold! Q*Bert, loose for the Atari 8-bits. Asking $5. Sold! The Activision Decathlon, loose for the Atari 8-bits. Asking $15. Sold!

It depends on what your definition of "banned" is, but for all intents and purposes, the feds have made it impossible to buy Lawn Darts. Companies can't make them to sell or import them from elsewhere, stores can't carry them, and if it's anything like the Kinder Surprise situation, individuals can't even import them personally (assuming Lawn Darts are even still made elsewhere). I don't think it's illegal to own old Lawn Darts, and used and second-hand sales are probably still legal, but that's it. In other news, I've discovered I can turn into a greedy little brat when the situation calls for it. Observe a few recent pick-ups where I volunteer: The first Atari 8-bit cartridges to appear at the store since I've been there. And of course the first thing I thought was, "Only four? Where are the others? Where's the computer they went with? I WANT MOAR!!" The book for arguably the most famous copy program for the Apple II, Copy II Plus. And my first thoughts were, "Where are the disks? Where's the computer? There had to be more! I WANT MOAR!!" There is a crack in the front of the case, but that's easily replaceable, and the discs are just about mint. "Where's the manual? Where did all this person's other games go? Why can't we get another windfall like my very first day at the store? MOAR, DANGIT!!" Then I breathed, calmed down, and decided this wasn't such a bad haul anyway. Actually there were a few other scattered PS1 bits, discs and cases pretty much randomly thrown together. I'll have what's here up for sale soon, and at least a couple of the Atari cartridges may make it into the sale thread as well. Other interesting bits this weekend: Now I can determine once and for all whether I like Nine Inch Nails. I couldn't stand them or pretty much any alternative back when it was all new, and listening to a coworker play The Downward Spiral in its entirety almost every weekend for a couple of years didn't help matters. But since then I've discovered, to my surprise, that a lot of the old stuff has grown on me. Tracks from Pretty Hate Machine are a lot more fun to play in the music games than I thought they'd be, and I've come to appreciate "Closer" as more than just a drunk frat vow. So I'll give these a spin and also see if The Downward Spiral as a whole has aged any better to my ears. A random assortment of toons that my inner child demanded I buy. And finally... What do you get for the person who has everything and insists on paying top dollar for it? Harman Kardon music CD-R's. Yep, now you can pay the "make the RIAA happy" fee and throw in a few bucks more to get Harmon Kardon's name on the disc. All for the same quality of those discs you can buy by the barrel at Office Depot! Don't worry, I didn't actually pay money for this thing. Trying to sell used CD-R's at the thrift store doesn't usually go over very well, so I'm giving this one a "proper" disposal.

It... kind of makes sense? Okay no, not really, but I can see it being an effective selling point. You know someone who really wants one and they have a birthday coming up, so you take the chance that they don't have it yet. If it turns out they do, you can give them the gift receipt and they can enjoy a $60 shopping spree instead. You're still out the other $60, but at least you had a gift in time, one they would have really enjoyed were it not for circumstances. (cough) The fact you or your giftee could put it back on eBay and possibly reclaim the full $120 is beside the point. It's not entirely unlike how the airlines encourage you buy ticket "insurance" nowadays, so you can get a "full" refund if you have to cancel your flight.

I'm throwing money at my monitor but nothing's happening...

That's a surprisingly catchy name for a NoaC console.

I found the easiest, if not exactly cheapest, way to get S-video from the Genesis and 32X... Combine it with the A/V cable adapter that came with the 32X for connecting to a Genesis I, and you get the best video and audio the Genesis has to offer, at least short of using a monitor that can tap the RGB signals.

Once upon a time, Marvel wasn't a movie studio and wasn't owned by another movie studio. So the only way any Marvel properties could become movies was for other movie studios to license their properties. All the "non-Marvel" Marvel movies that have come out since the creation of Marvel Studios and the MCU are the product of licenses negotiated in the early 2000's or even prior. Some of those old licenses have since expired and the movie/TV rights have reverted back to Marvel. That's why Daredevil (formerly Fox) and Ghost Rider (formerly Columbia/Sony) are now in shows produced by Marvel Studios. In other cases, the license holders decided to play nice and let Marvel "borrow" their characters back... for a fee, of course. That's why the Hulk (Universal) and Spider-Man (Sony again) have appeared in the MCU. But for Deadpool, the X-Men and a few others, other studios are holding onto the properties they licensed and continuing to make their own movies outside of the MCU. However, even if Deadpool's movie rights weren't owned by another studio, don't think Disney wouldn't make an R-rated movie if they thought it was the smart thing to do. That's what their Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures outlets are for. And if you don't think Disney would make a Marvel movie outside of the MCU, they actually already have: Big Hero 6. Just to go further off this tangent, as boog mentioned, the Fantastic Four is one of those currently-"non"-Marvel Marvel properties. Many of these licenses have a condition where, as long as a studio is making movies, they can keep the license. Fox currently owns the Fantastic Four license. Marvel was really hoping to get the Fantastic Four into the MCU, so much so that reportedly they offered Fox an extension on the Daredevil license if they were to let the Fantastic Four license expire. Fox refused, figuring there was more money to be made in building a new cinematic universe with the Fantastic Four characters. After all, it's worked pretty well with the X-Men (also Fox) so far. The result... well, we all know how well that went. As for Marvel's own treatment of the Fantastic Four, that's not because they can't print the comics anymore; the comic rights are still Marvel's, and always will be. However, Marvel is becoming a bit infamous for not exactly helping draw attention to properties that are still licensed elsewhere. It wasn't "censorship" in the sense that they *had* to remove the Fantastic Four et al from t-shirts, etc.; it's because they chose to, as a way of sticking it to Fox. And now to bring this back onto the subject, Season 6 maybe hasn't had as many legendary titles as some of the other seasons, but finally getting two of my favorite tables, Dr. Who and Eight Ball Deluxe, was worth the price of admission to me.

Hmm... I have colleagues in Taipei... Or rather I used to. New job starts tomorrow. Oh well.

Nice grabs, Tanooki. Personally I avoid eBay for most of my collecting tendencies. It's just too easy to go hog wild, drop a bunch of money, and then wonder where I'm going to put everything. I have enough that problem shopping at AtariAge.

The rumor I heard about the clips was they were unnecessary beyond satisfying a legal requirement. The point was not to keep other RF signals out, but to keep the system's own RF signals in. The FCC requires any device capable of generating RF to be shielded in order to prevent interference with surrounding appliances and electronics. That's why pretty much every console has big metal plates covering most of the circuitry inside. The 32X's metal clips extended that shielding through the cartridge port to keep it legally protected. I remember when the 32X came out, thinking that it looked like a suicide run. Everyone around me agreed. And actually, it was a suicide run. Then-Sega-of-America-CEO Tom Kalinske confirmed as much. It wasn't meant to be quite the fire-and-forget release it pretty much became, but even on the drawing board it was little more than a plan to milk the Genesis a little longer while prepping the Saturn for launch. That might have worked were it not for Sony's surprise announcement of the first PlayStation. Sega of Japan went into a tizzy, and, as Flojomojo mentioned, that's where the company really began competing with itself. SOJ, against Kalinske's advice, rushed the Saturn to market while still trying to hawk the 32X, and in the end, both consoles and game catalogs suffered. Kalinske finally got fed up with his Japanese counterparts and showed himself the door. There was no way I was going to pay $150 for a console add-on, even if I could have afforded it on my college-student budget. But when the local Babbage's clearanced them for $40, I bit. It's not a great console, but it has its highlights, which have pretty much all been mentioned. After Burner and Space Harrier are indeed great, enough to make me wish they'd ported other late '80s Sega arcade games to the system, like Out Run, Thunder Blade and Power Drift. Virtua Racing Deluxe does a good job showing off the system's 3D capabilities. Mortal Kombat 2 is nothing more than extra code bolted on to the existing Genesis port, but it's still an improvement, little quirks notwithstanding. I had fun with the system, but when I finally found a used Saturn with a good price tag, I decided to dump the 32X. This was before my hording... I mean, historical archiving tendencies took over, and as good as some 32X games were, they were better on the Saturn and elsewhere. I've since picked up another 32X, and I'm happy to have it again, but even now I still view it as the Hail Mary it was.

Why so? Every decade or so we get a better Pac-Man on the 2600, and it's been worth it every time.

Ever played Mortal Kombat 3 on the Genesis? Sculptured Software, who developed all the SNES versions before being commissioned to develop MK3 and UMK3 for the Genesis as well, proved the Genesis by itself, sans CD and sans 32X, is more than capable of capturing all of the essentials from the arcade game. All of the characters, all of their animation, complete sets of character grunts and groans, and all of Shao Kahn's announcements are in place. I believe Genesis MK3 has only one "set" of male fighter sounds, where the arcade game had two or three, but otherwise it's all there. And this was for a game that had more characters and backgrounds than MK1 or MK2. There is a minor catch in that the digital sample quality in MK3 is lower than in MK2, but I think that would be a small price to pay. You might not even have to pay it since there are fewer elements to recreate for MK2. You just have to be willing to make the cartridge ROM big enough, which nowadays is the least of your worries.

Thanks, Keatah! Icon Restore works like a charm.