FujiSkunk

Better buy a couple of lottery tickets, Silverfleet, with the luck you're having! The only recent find I have to brag about is another batch of VCD's. This time they came courtesy of Malaysia: A couple of interesting bits: The packaging for Titanic is pretty extravagant as far as VCD's go, with metallic gold lettering just like fancy laserdisc and DVD packaging used to get. Independence Day is surprisingly letterboxed to its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and not pan-and-scanned like every other VCD I've seen so far. The packaging makes no mention of this, and actually I'm not sure it's a good thing anyway, since it makes the already low resolution of the image even lower! Lastly, whoever wrote the plot summary for The Game was using an old script. It talks about how Nicholas Van Orton's daughter gives him the gift certificate. That was in the earlier drafts, and actually the creators had cast Jodie Foster in the part, before deciding to make the character a brother played by Sean Penn instead. I assume the VCD is otherwise legit, even if it does say "Dolby Digital" at the bottom (VCD's use MPEG audio). Then again, does it count if it's at least digital audio and encoded for Dolby Pro-Logic?

Edited bump. Wii Sports Resort, with case but without manual. Asking $10. Sold! The Simpsons Game, with case but without manual. Asking $3. Sold!

Edited bump. An Ice Blue Nintendo DS Lite. It works, but it has issues, mostly due to a flaky hinge between the two halves... Asking $5 "for parts" due to the flaky hinge. Sold! Animal Crossing: Wild World, complete in box for the Nintendo DS. Asking $12. Sold! Star Wars: Battlefront II, complete in box for the PSP. Asking $5. Sold!

I've sold a couple more batches of games to cjameslv, and I couldn't have asked for smoother transactions. I'm sure he could have, though. Don't let PayPal get away with not printing his suite number! Anyhoo, thanks for the sales!

Nice finds, Silverfleet! You're right about whether SMS Choplifter is truly the "best", but if you're a fan of the arcade game, it is the most faithful. The Famicom also got a port of the arcade game, but between the two I prefer the SMS version. I wouldn't mind finding Xevious 3D/G+ either. A few years back I finally found one of my coveted PlayStation SHMUPs, Raiden Project.

I might still have that tape somewhere. If I find it and decide I'm not deathly mortified by it I may try to give it some digital clean-up. Thing was I didn't even have patch cables to connect the keyboard to the boom box I was using, so it was all recorded using the boom box's mic. Like I said, amateur trickery. In the meantime, shoot me links if you like. I'd be interested to hear your stuff. That's cool! As much as I want one, I have yet to see an SK-8 in person. For a while I had an SK-5 which, minus the ROM Pack slot, is a lot like the SK-8. Same sounds, seven ROM-Pack-like songs built in, and lots of sampling fun. I let it go a little while back because two keys had broken and I knew someone else would be better than me at fixing it. Please don't mention DX-7's and thrift stores in the same sentence around me... (sigh) I'm kidding, it's all good, except I'm still grumbling about how I just left it sitting there. Speaking of the DX-7, and just to derail this thread a little more (temporarily, I promise!), when I starting to fiddle around with REAPER, a music editor not entirely unlike ProTools only a heckuva lot cheaper, I splurged on Novation's FM-8, a DX-7 emulator turned into a music editor plug-in. My crowning achievement (so far?) is a recreation of Ray Lynch's "Celestial Soda Pop" which I then multi-tracked and turned into home-made DLC for Rock Band 3. I covered the song pretty well, in my own humble opinion.

Yep, the RO-551 "World Songs" pack is the single one I own. I believe that's the one that originally came bundled with the PT-87. I didn't get a power supply either, but fortunately the barrel size and voltage are among those commonly used, so a universal works just fine. All those old Casios and Yamahas are popular with circuit benders, because underneath the limited interface is often a very versatile synthesizer, at least as versatile as the NES sound chip. Add in the hardware tricks the benders use, and the possibilities are endless. I remember when I discovered I could make a whole host of new sounds on my original PSS-270 by plugging in a universal power adapter, selecting a sound, dropping the adapter's voltage down to the minimum, selecting another sound, and then raising the voltage again. It was a "box of chocolates" sort of thing. I never knew what sound I was going to get. I suspect my experimenting contributed to that particular PSS-270's demise. I've been afraid to try it on my current one! Actually it was four or five songs on a single pack that cost $20. They weren't exactly cheap back in the day. But this was before MIDI was priced for the masses, and it saved parents the grief of hearing a keyboard's demo song over and over and over (remember this one?), so I imagine Casio still managed to sell a few packs. Before I got into MIDI sequencing, my biggest "production" was recreating the Andrew Lloyd Webber medley we were playing in high school concert band on a Yamaha PSS-680. That keyboard had good-for-its-time 5-track sequencer which I made extensive use of, but the final product still required some cassette dubbing and other amateur trickery, not to mention some live-to-tape playing that I didn't always bother to fix. I was pretty proud of it at the time, but if I were to hear it now I'm sure I'd bury the tape! You pretend it's a flute or a trumpet... even when you have it set to the piano sound.

If I ever do, I get first dibs! It's funny you mention the Casio ROM Packs. I remember when they were still sold new. $20 a pop for four, maybe five songs. Back then I used to hang out at the local Wal-Mart every Saturday, sometimes all day long. Wal-Marts had nice music keyboard displays at the time, and I would play with them all, often much to the chagrin of the employees. My first two keyboards, the Yamaha PSS-270 and then the smaller, cheaper Casio PT-100, came from Wal-Mart. In fact the Yamaha was the first thing I ever put on layaway, anticipating the day when I could pay off the $100 tab (a lot of money to a 12-or-so-year-old). That was also around the time the NES made its American debut, and that same Wal-Mart had one of those demo consoles with every first-party launch title built in, always surrounded a horde of kids fighting for their next turn. Imagine how much that thing is worth now! Anyway, I never did own one of the Casio ROM Pack keyboards back in the day, but friends did, and I loved playing with them. Then a couple of years back, the thrift store where I volunteer got in a Casio PT-87 with its demo ROM Pack. I resisted buying it at first, because I actually would like to find an SK-8, one of Casio's first sampling keyboards that's also a ROM Pack keyboard. But, I believe the PT-87 is the same model those friends had owned, and finally nostalgia won out. I'm amused how the ROM Pack keyboards have to be able to play five or six notes at a time, to fully support the ROM Packs, but even then the PT-87 lets you play only one note at a time. It's a cute little piece of '80s tech despite its obvious limitations, and if I ever do find an SK-8 I'll probably keep the PT-87 anyway. All of this to say, I'm looking for those ROM Packs too, but if ever happen to stumble across multiples of the same ROM Packs, I'll keep you in mind!

Regardless of which side of the CRT vs. HDTV debate you fall on, I don't think it's fair to chastise, even lightly, those who prefer how games look on CRT's. We can argue which is "better" and which was "intended" and all kinds of other subjective measurements until the cows come home, but in the end some of us are just going to like scan lines, rounded pixels and NTSC color effects more than cold, precise, jagged stairsteps and checkerboards, or worse, something mushy and out of focus. Yes, my bias is showing. Nyah. Having said that, I do agree that expecting newer tech to remain compatible with aging CRT's is not practical. I don't think making the NES Classic HDMI-only was a bad idea, and I don't bemoan AtGames going in that direction either. The only thing that will separate me from my CRT's is either their deaths or mine, but like it not, HDTV is not only the future, it's overwhelmingly the present. Having said that, I believe the technology is out there to make old games look just as "good" on HDTV's as on CRT's. That means CRT people don't have to dread the end of their televisions, and all of us don't have to have these constant debates on which is "better". There are the linedoublers and Framemeisters for genuine hardware, but there are also a lot of good post-processing filters to give modern clones and emulators the look CRT fans know and love. The NES Classic's "CRT" filter was a step in the right direction, but Nestopia's "NTSC" filter is so much better. It turns this: ...into this: That's beautiful, in my humble opinion, and perfectly captures that unique NES way colors clash and blur onscreen. MAME's RGB aperture effects are also fun to play with. They allow us to have visuals like this: Just about how I remember it in the arcades! As HDTV technology gets even better, with higher base resolutions and better contrast ratios, I believe we'll all get the visuals we want. And hey, you want that phosphor glow the way vector monitors used to make? There's an app for that too (which hopefully one day will see more development)!

I believe Ms. Pac-Man now holds the crown in my collection, and they're almost all different versions for different systems. Counting only physical releases, there are... Apple II - AtariSoft Atari 2600 - Atari (two copies) Atari 5200 - Atari Atari 7800 - Atari Atari Lynx - Atari Atari 8-bits - Atari ColecoVision - Opcode (Pac-Man Collection) Commodore 64 - AtariSoft Intellivision - IntelligentVision NES - Tengen NES - Namco Super Nintendo - Williams Nintendo 64 - Namco (Namco Museum 64) Nintendo Game Boy Color - Namco Nintendo Game Boy Advance - Namco (Namco Museum) Sega Genesis - Tengen Sony PlayStation - Namco (Namco Museum Volume 3) Sony PlayStation 2 - Namco (Namco Museum) Sony PlayStation 2 - Namco (Namco Museum 50th Anniversary) XBox 360 - Namco (Namco Museum Virtual Arcade) That's 21 different ways to insert a cartridge or disc into a system to play Ms. Pac-Man. If we count hacks and homebrews, the number goes up a tad more. But, if we're talking about copies of the same version of the same game for the same system, I think Combat still holds that distinction for me.

Edited bump. The blue-case edition of the Sega Game Gear. This console is in great physical shape with only a slight bit of scuffing on the case and on the screen, all of which are exaggerated by the camera flash in my opinion. Unfortunately, like so many old Game Gears, this one won't stay on for more than a second or so. Both battery covers are here. Asking $5 "for parts". Sold! The Atomic Purple edition of the Game Boy Color. Unlike the Game Gear, this console works perfectly. Also opposite to the Game Gear, this one has many noticeable nicks and scratches on the screen, only a few of which were picked up by the camera. They're serious enough that a perfectionist would want to replace the screen, but they're not so bad that they detract from game play. The battery door is here. Asking $12. Sold! Two loose cartridges of Pokémon: Blue Version for the Game Boy or Game Boy Color. Asking $10 each. Both sold! Pokémon: Goldene Edition, loose for the Game Boy or Game Boy Color. This is the German release of Pokémon: Gold Version, with all in-game text in German. The cartridge plays flawlessly on a North American Game Boy Color. Asking $15. Sold! Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, loose for the Game Boy Color. Asking $8. Sold!

Excellent score, Jdubya. Digging into the trash for a fully functional Atari 2600 is nothing to be ashamed of. I can't help but think I would willingly dive into a McDonald's dumpster to rescue an Atari. Maybe it depends on how far I'd have to dig. Ahem. Anyway... I acquired some interesting bits this weekend and last... My own store had a nice assortment of portable consoles and games waiting for me today. Several of these will be up for grabs soon. Another '80s Yamaha keyboard to fawn over. This was one of the first models with 100 different sounds to choose from. The PSR-6 is basically the full-size-key variant of the PSS-170 which is almost the same as the PSS-270, which was my very first keyboard back in the day. I still have a working PSS-270, so this one will go back to the store for sale. Still, it's a nice one, and it's fully functional! At another usual stop, my roommate and I were rummaging through a box of comic books when this popped up. I took it out and stared at it a moment, when he said, "You know you're going to buy it." So I did. I haven't read it yet, but if it's anything like Prince's music, it'll probably be a bit pretentious, a little narcissistic, hard to follow at times, and very compelling.

And yet they can still make a product that gives retailers the ability to create 6AM sheep lines. I'd say they still got it, even if they don't usually seem quite sure what to do with it.

My contribution to a recent Fark Photoshop contest. You can see the original pic and other submissions here.

I'm wondering more about to where to put the cartridge...

I for one see your counterpoint, 128K, but the NES Classic didn't strike me as the typical "it" toy. This should have been a win-win for Nintendo: free press and lots of rabid fans without any need for artificial shortages geared to spin something into an "it" toy. And yet there was a shortage anyway. Consequently, Nintendo still got lots of press, but it was mixed press, with good reviews combined with grumbling about how people couldn't get it. Their reputation of not wanting to bother with money ready to be thrown at them has been further cemented as well. Whether the shortage was due to honest oversight or incompetency is debatable, but either way I don't think it was intentional.

Last year's health issues interfered with a lot of plans, not the least of which was adding more content to the Games of Atari website. I'm happy to say after months of inactivity, I'm ready to add content again. I now have a ColecoVision modded for S-video, and the pictures are coming in quite nicely: Plenty of original titles and lots of modern homebrews are waiting to be catalogued. When I'm done that Q*Bert entry will be one step closer to looking like the Parker Brothers ad that planted the first seeds of inspiration for this project, long, long ago. In the meantime, I enjoyed a rare day to myself today, and as usually happens, I found myself knee deep, just about literally, in little spur-of-the-moment exercises that in the end got me a little closer to my perfect* audio/video room (* definition subject to change without notice). I had an A/V switcher that was originally going to route video to my video-capturing Win2K box, but a while back I decided captures were better with direct connections. Also a while back I connected my laserdisc player to the tube TV on the opposite side of the room, thanks to a nice long set of RCA cables I scored at the thrift store. Today while setting things up for ColecoVision captures, I glanced at the dormant A/V switcher, and realized I could hook that up to the TV instead. Not only would I be able to run both the laserdisc player and the VCR through the TV while still keeping them within reach for capture projects, I could even pipe the Win2K box itself to the TV! Perhaps needless to say, that little idea pushed me down into a rabbit hole. Activating the video card's TV out meant installing more software, some of which demanded the dreaded Dot Net. Naturally Dot Net spit out an error when I tried to install the requested version. I think it's a law that Dot Net has to give everyone grief at least once per installation. Thankfully I got all that straightened out in decent time, and now I have the Win2K box's entire library on my TV, including... ...good ol' MAME! Of course since this is Win2K, it's not running the latest MAME... or Stella.. or any other emulator, but the versions it can run are more than enough for casual play. The only problem with this set-up is, since Win2K wasn't coded intelligently enough to properly rearrange desktop icons when the resolution is changed, my desktop becomes a big jumbled mess whenever I switch to the TV and the resolution knocks down to 640x480. Does anyone know if there was ever a third-party app or other bit of Win2K software that can capture a particular icon layout and then bring back that layout laster on? Parts of this Win2K box are well over 15 years old. It occurred to me while wrestling with all those cables in back that a machine I built to help me better enjoy old hardware and games has itself become a collection of old hardware and games. Even the games I bought new for the machine, games like Midtown Madness, SimCity 2000 and Descent 3, are now collected and played by the retro community. I was reminded how someone had brought a Win98 box with games to the 2016 Houston Arcade Expo, and even he was surprised at how many people were happy to play Doom and other games of the era on the intended hardware (have a picture). What's new is now old again! Finally, I have a question about this tube TV. It's a decently preserved Sony Trinitron from the early 2000's, and I am quite happy with it, but I've noticed it loves the color red. It doesn't bleed red the way some old TV's do, but reds definitely bloom a lot more than other colors. I know how to get into the TV's service menu, and I've done all kinds of fine adjustments even to the three different color guns, all in an effort to balance those blooming reds with the rest of the spectrum. The adjustments have helped somewhat, but I've come to the conclusion it's not a problem with the input signal being incorrectly processed, it's something about the hardware that makes reds shine brighter even when the TV is calibrated to treat all colors equally. I've also tried going the other way, turning the red gun down almost to nil, but then reds are so weak there may as well be no red at all. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium. Is this a common problem with older sets? Are there any good workarounds? Ah well, back to the grind tomorrow. Here's hoping for another happy, lazy yet productive day like this some time soon.

Dusting this thread off... *cough* I'm in the market for a disk notcher. Long story short, I plan on making a batch of semi-professional looking disks for the Commodore 64 and Apple IIe to take to video game shows. I have plenty of disks to work with already, but they're not all notched for double-sided use, and I'd like to do it the right way. I know I could hop on eBay and snag one for $25 or so, but I'm hoping to find one at least a little cheaper than that. PM me if you have one to sell. Thanks!

Edited bump. Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2001 for the Wii, with Cabela's Top Shot Elite gun controller included. Asking $10 for the set. Sold! Wipeout: The Game for the Wii, still factory-sealed. Asking $5. Sold! The Collector's Edition bundle of NBA Live 2002, Madden NFL 2002 and NASCAR Thunder 2002 for the PlayStation. There is some noticeable packaging wear and a few visible scratches on the discs, but nothing that looks serious. Asking $4. Sold!

I enjoyed another smooth sale to thegoldenband. Thank you for your purchase!

Once upon a time there was an Asteroids clone for the Macintosh, where you were blowing up floating, rotating half-spheres. The name was... you guessed it: Hemiroids.

And the theme song was stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

I have to admit I hadn't heard of the No_Intro set until now. For the most part I've relied on the Good sets for my emulation collection, and they haven't steered me wrong so far. The actual utilities are a little obtuse, but once you have everything sorted, you're good to go. I'm happy to report the Tengen Ms. Pac-Man ROM from the GoodNES set plays fine on the NES Classic, without any graphical hiccups.

The Gauntlet issue I mentioned is with the first Gauntlet, the one published by Tengen. Most NoaCs, and now the NES Classic as well, throw in random other tile graphics for walls, items and such that aren't really there, making it hard to tell what's "real" and what isn't.