FujiSkunk

Well, shut me up.

Nice guide. Thanks for creating and sharing. If you can find a way to squeeze it in cleanly, you might also list the differences between using a one-button joystick and a two-button joystick, for the few games that were programmed to detect that. I know Asteroids and Xevious are -- Asteroids uses either the second button or down for hyperspace, and Xevious fires both bombs and bullets with a single-button controller regardless of the difficulty switches -- and there may be one or two others as well. I seem to recall Pole Position II did something different with one-button joysticks, but I can't remember what.

Any love for the prototype?

I have a soft spot for the 4-switch woody, since that was my first Atari, and I have a soft spot for the heavy sixer, since that was the first Atari. But I think my favorite design has to be the Vader. It's a perfectly '80s design without any of the decade's more embarrassing styles.

You realize what the irony would be of having a SNES capable of playing multiple systems' games, right?

I believe Skycurser was there Saturday. At the very least, the ad sign for it was still there. The machine was in the "spill-over" room, which I think had more machines this year than the main room!

I (finally) has pictures! I still need to add captions and some stories, but the pics themselves are up for viewing. Some of these were taken with my phone and others with a "real" camera, so the quality varies a bit. But hey, now you can see me when I was taken prisoner!

Well, if it's true that Patreon was funded with venture capital, and if it's true Conte takes only a straight salary for his involvement in the company -- or even no salary, as some fans have suggested -- then Conte himself is not getting rich off of Patreon. Now that doesn't necessarily mean he isn't sitting pretty; if he is drawing a salary, then it's probably a comfortable salary, and I'm sure the company itself is shaping up to be worth a pretty penny, especially if they're planning for an IPO. But it also doesn't mean Conte is getting a piece of every donation that goes through Patreon. What I figure it ultimately means is, Conte has a nice day job that allows him a little more luxury than the average indie band would have. Some may think that's controversial enough, but hey, why do those of us who didn't win the talent-and-connections lottery have day jobs, if not to better fund our passions (among lesser important things, like food and shelter)? And nobody, not even the article author, suggested Conte was setting up shill accounts. Pomplamoose has a Patreon account, which they use to solicit funds for the band, but unless somebody has an article saying otherwise, I haven't seen anyone accusing Conte or the band of having multiple Patreon accounts, either for Pomplamoose or for Patreon itself. The controversy is whether Conte should be more upfront about his connection to Patreon when he mentions Patreon and Pomplamoose in the same breath. Whenever someone visits Patreon, Conte benefits, at least indirectly, whether or not that person donates to the band. I agreed Conte could be a little more open about his connection to Patreon, based on the press release the original article was harping on, but beyond that I haven't seen evidence of anything downright unethical.

I would guess it's because of the difficulty of hacking a 2600 game ROM to remove the music while leaving the rest of the sound intact. I'm sure that wouldn't be hard for a Nukey Shay or a Thomas Jentzsch, but AtGames may not have a Nukey Shay or Thomas Jentzsch on staff. It may also be something similar to the deal Taito insisted on for Space Invaders on the previous Flashbacks. I can see Konami saying, "We can't use the old music, and just to be absolutely certain it doesn't sneak in, use this approved version of the game instead."

I won't disagree. At best it's a little disingenuous and at worst it's exactly as you describe. I'm willing to give him at least a little benefit of the doubt since Pomplamoose isn't just him and I'm sure as an "arteest" he likes to think of the band and the business venture as separate entities. Still, you're right. He's not exactly starving.

That's... interesting. Still, I won't fault the guy for being a good businessman and putting his profits into a labor of love.. a good-quality labor of love at that. I don't think it's quite the conspiracy to shill or shameless "marketing stunt" that this article's author is making it out to be.

My thoughts and prayers to you and your family, Chuck. I hope your father-in-law is at least comfortable. To roberto, my Secret Santa, thank you again! To bomberpunk, my victim... You're welcome, and I'm glad I found some things you and your daughter could enjoy! To Grig, our man behind the curtain, thank you for again setting this train in motion and keeping it on the tracks. To everyone, Merry Christmas!

I have something to say. This will be very out of character for me, but I want everyone to know up front, I mean not a word of it. Here goes... **** Nintendo. **** eBay too. And while we're at it, **** Xmas. **** all of this capitalistic hooey, in fact. And most of all, **** me for willfully, happily playing along. Whew. Now that that's off my chest, guess what I had waiting for me under the Christmas tree this morning? I didn't think I wanted one of these things. I told my mother as much. I have the original system, and with maybe one or two exceptions, I have all of the games. I had no desire to participate in any of the Black Friday Redeuxs whenever a store claimed they might have some for sale, and I had no intention of subjecting any friends or family to Nintendo's short-the-market shenanigans. Yet there I was, squealing with excitement when I pulled it out of the gift bag. And there was my mother, giddy with joy that she had managed to make me giddy with joy. Of course I had to go and ask that question, which I blurted without thinking. "Where did you find one?" I regretted it as soon as I asked it, because I knew what the answer was going to be. "eBay!" Sigh. But I know why she did it. I mean, aside from the fact she's the mother of an only child and she still spoils that child rotten even though he's 42 years old. It's the same reason why I spend a small fortune on postage to ship random gifts to friends all over the U.S. (and one in Canada) every year. Because when it's Christmas, you want nothing more than to see people get a little jolt of happiness, and to remember that, despite all of the mess and drama that the holidays drown in every year, the Christmas spirit is alive and well, and still worth sharing with the ones you love. Cost be damned. So yeah, **** you Nintendo. You made my mother spend a lot more money than she should have. But thank you also, for making her smile. --- Now for a more objective review. This gizmo is exactly what it promises to be, and for that, it's awesome. 30 of the NES's biggest games in a single box that you just plug in and go. The controller looks and feels exactly like the original NES controller. The graphics are what you'd expect for 8-bit pixels getting blown up to HD resolutions, but that's part of the system's retro charm. Sound is good, control is responsive (once the TV is set to game mode, at least) and the list of games is commendable. There are some titles I wish had made the cut, but it's easy to understand why they didn't. Popeye probably isn't remembered well enough to be worth its licensing fee, Tetris is on every system imaginable now, Double Dragon isn't truly "double" on the NES, and including Ms. Pac-Man would have meant either settling for the lesser-quality Namco port or biting the bullet and licensing Tengen's port, something I'm sure Nintendo wasn't keen on doing even 25 years later. Duck Hunt is also missing, for obvious reasons. However, the first-party and third-party titles that did make it in would have made any NES owner extremely happy back in the day, so it's hard to fault the line-up even after coming up with a bunch of but-what-about's. In short, it's a great little box.

I LOVE the shirt! Whenever I get a new car, the first thing my roommate reminds me to do is buy the Haynes manual for it. That shirt would crack him up, along with another car enthusiast friend. Although... shouldn't it point out that's just for the 1981-1984 models?

I sold a batch of games to crazykong, and things went very smoothly. Thanks for the sale!

I sold a game to Dauber, and everything worked out just fine. Thanks for the sale!

Aww, that's awesome!

A mountain of boxes with pre-paid postage and easy-to-read and easy-to-scan labels? I'd say they probably love him compared to the average customer.

Here are the goodies my Secret Santa gave me, which came all the way from Singapore! I have stories to tell about a lot of these! I admit I have the two Intellivision games already, however, I happen to be building "road collections" for several consoles, to take along when offering games to play at some event. Only in the past couple of months did I decide to start a road collection for the Intellivision, so these came in at the perfect time! Speaking of perfect timing, I got my first Disney Infinity bits to play with even more recently (picture over here), and now I have a couple more! With the Capcom DVD I learned about the Tokyo Game Show, a monstrously big video game convention in Japan, even bigger than E3! I'll probably never get to go, but now I have a souvenir from the 2010 show! I absolutely love Pocky. So does my roommate. It's a miracle the box survived long enough to be photographed! I've bought the American packaging here in the States, and once in a while I'll run into someone selling the Japanese boxes. Now I have a Singapore box. I wonder... no, I better not, I have too many collections going as it is! The other candy box is Merlion Hazelnuts Chocolates. The box told me some things about Singapore I didn't know: I've since read that historians believe the prince actually saw a tiger, but hey, what do they know? The Escape from New York discs are VideoCD's, and my Secret Santa might be surprised to know these actually aren't the first VideoCD's I've received as gifts. Years back my mother found Pink Floyd's P.U.L.S.E. on VideoCD, to complement the laserdisc and DVD editions I have. I haven't really actively collected VideoCD's beyond that, but I tend to keep whatever I find, both for the interesting packaging from other countries and the stories they tell of the first digital video disc standard to achieve widespread success (though not really in the U.S.). Here is Escape from New York at home with its new brothers and sisters: The PlayStation 20th Anniversary souvenir is a set of four spools of colored tape. These would be perfect for wrapping gifts for fellow video game fans, but of course I'm going to keep them complete instead! Thanks, Secret Santa, for all of these treats, and the Unity t-shirt and my Christmas card! Every so often I get reminded just how global the AtariAge community really is, and that's just darn cool.

This is the culmination of three different pick-ups from my store: The game and portal were with a batch of Wii games, and then the following week I noticed Sadness in the toy section. Then this weekend, all the other figures were in a toy bundle ready to be put on the floor. My roommate spied it and asked me if they were what he thought they were. They were. We rescued them from getting sold as toys and now I have a pretty good Infinity bundle to sell... or perhaps buy myself. Sadness is from Series 3.0, which I don't think this particular game and portal support, but all the rest go together, at least. Also this past weekend, another regular stop had recently got in a PlayStation with games and accessories. The console itself is somewhat broken, which they already knew: the hub responsible for anchoring and spinning the disc is missing, which I'm told is a fairly easy fix. The games weren't anything too special, at least not at the price; Rayman, Spyro 2, Driver, Resident Evil Director's Cut and Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation were among the 20 discs. I paid $65 for the lot, not the most spectacular deal, but I was in the Christmas spirit and the shop owner has been battling health issues lately. Then when I got home, I spied these mixed in with the accessories. Sega-branded controller extension cables, which I assume can be used for any system with 9-pin ports. Not a bad little bonus!

Actually, Bill's statements are pretty legit.

Thank you, Retro STrife! That's one more game found! With this capture, only one of the Activision/Absolute Three remains on the lam: Tomcat: The F-14 Flight Simulator. When that one is finally located, my Activision and Absolute collection will be complete (not counting Ghostbusters II)! In the meantime, another international fugitive is now among the most wanted: Somewhere long ago, probably on these very forums, I mentioned how Marble Madness was one of my favorite games, and while the Genesis version wasn't bad, it really should have been better. When someone suggested I try the Japanese version instead, I started doing some homework. That's when I learned Marble Madness was actually released twice for the Genesis / Mega Drive, with one version sold in Japan and the other version sold everywhere else. I also learned the Japanese version was published by Tengen, responsible for most ports of Atari Games' arcade titles during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Tengen usually did good work, but their Marble Madness is easily their best effort for the Genesis / Mega Drive, just about arcade perfect in looks and in sound! Thanks to the Mega Everdrive, I can now play it on a real Genesis, but I would like to own the actual cartridge as well.