satan165

SOLD!

i am selling off part of my collection of 2600 paraphernalia. i have 21 boxes (most include games and manuals). i have done my best to grade each one and put the info in a google doc rather than post 50-60 pics of front/back of each box, each cart, etc... that being said, i am glad to take a pic of anything in particular if someone is interested. eBay Auction -- Item Number: 291011023792 thanks!

i was at the blackhawks game, got home for this breaking news................

Army of 2600 combined with a pyramid of speakers and a swimming pool of rotgut. These things widen my eyes and tickle my blood curdling zest for life. I made a public folder called 'army of 2600 shirts' that anyone else can feel free to add their pics to.

i got some good ones, ill have them posted within 24 hours i must also add that i am a historical 'between an XL and XXL' type guy and this XL is PERFECT. honestly when i got it i looked at it and i was convinced it would be JUST BARELY too small but still wearable. however in fact it is exactly the right size. i am 6'3, 210lbs for reference. pics forthcoming...............................

Let me help you with that General Mike! (just subscribed on youtube as well) http://youtu.be/azBLyL8WfMg ^this

everything arrived today. packaged very well in a nice box with a visually well put together return address label. i knew what it was immediately even though i ordered this a while ago and had kind of forgotten about it. the shirt looks great. ive been manufacturing and selling shirts for a while and a quick visual inspection tells me what i need to know. stan tells no lies. i will be wearing this out friday night like a billboard and certainly getting plenty of questions. and the CD. as told, shrink wrapped, heavy duty insert with tray card, great design, silk screened CD, no crappy label, etc..... but all of this is nonsense. i must admit, going off of 'dr. mindbender in the lab', i was mostly buying this to support the artist, for the cool shirt, because it was 2600 related. not because i necessarily dug the music....i liked the idea of it but the actual sound was a bit grating. fired the disc in my modded xbox and alas the xbmc media player was still on shuffle from the last disc i must have played. so it started with track 8. and as stan said, this song is 'beat oriented' and not so experimental. i thought 'hey this isnt bad' but i didnt go berzerk or anything (pun intended). but a few minutes in - and continuing with the next track that shuffled in - i began to feel the beats and move to them. ive only had 1 1/2 beers so its not that, its that i like to dance and i know good electronic music. and this is. supremely worth the money. thanks to stan, general mike and albert. ill get a pic posted saturday morning of me in full debauched mode rocking the shirt amongst the masses of humanity.

just sent payment.........and since no one else has inquired i will.....what is the 'something special'??? :?

speaking as a world record holder 66 times over and with well over 100 ranked verified scores i have one piece of advice. roll the camera 24/7. set up the camera, hit record and just play freeway for an hour. if you dont get anything decent, delete it. because you dont know when that score is coming, if you could accurately predict it youd do it right now. start recording all the time, and dont stop.

karpis - you should have asked me privately about this. i have boxed copies of starmaster, river raid, kaboom and barnstorming (all doubles) ive been looking to dump for a while. id love to put them in a good home...............

wow! i hope you are documenting these with video for submission to twin galaxies! though for what its worth, i have probably 10 scores (over 3 hours of actual videotape) which i submitted with all the paperwork and logs months ago and still have not been put up as there has been changes in the referee for the 2600. in fact, im going to email again (i never get responses) asking what the status is of my submissions and also of getting a new ref!

wow, amazing!

well done karpis - great score!

I am not sure exactly when I became aware of this game's existence. I remember showing Chasing Ghosts to a friend and he pointed out the game in this scene: That got me interested to check it out. It's interesting that Todd chose to have the game play in the background because I think it is the most amazing and most unsung achievement in console gaming and possibly gaming in general. It stands as the longest video game marathon ever as far as I know, lasting over 72 hours. The sheer drudgery of the game after 15 minutes....repeated literally thousands of times and the amount of luck necessary to keep it going (especially when you are under high levels of duress due to exhaustion) boggles the mind. The game play is as such: you must guide each of the five members of the band through obstacles to their vehicle (as shown on the cover of their album, 'Escape') within a set time limit. You repeat until all members - one by one - are safe at which point you are awarded a bonus, then you repeat at the same difficulty level ad infinitum. Your score is measured in dollars, not points. The obstacles drain you of your dollars and also sap precious time. Your only saviors are your roadies (which make you briefly impervious to obstacles) and your manager (who makes your impervious until level end and awards you a large amount of dollars). As I said, once you have completed saving all five band members the game repeats at the same difficulty level. However within the five members, Steve Perry (the last member of the five) is the most difficult. Perhaps a player of Todd's caliber can master avoiding the obstacles often but usually a marginal performance in that regard will usually suffice to leave you enough time to make it to your vehicle. 'Usually' - after repeated plays you will come to rely time to time on a manager for invincibility and in the case of a marathon attempt you require his bonus dollars. The managers appear at random; at times you may encounter them for two or three band members in a row. At other times you may not come across one for entire rounds of five members. In Todd's marathon session, he averaged well over one million dollars an hour. Even in a two or three hour attempt this would require ultra quick dexterity at all times to avoid the majority of obstacles and certainly a fair if not generous availability of managers. Averaged over THREE DAYS this is simply amazing; keeping dexterity levels high day after day to not simply 'blow it' and reach game end is remarkable. My first casual attempts at the game were at home as I learned the basics. Soon after I had a rare chance to have available to me an Epson VGA projector. It passes through our workplace time to time (on loan to salespersons, then shipped back to our headquarters IT department out of state). In that short interim I always have a quick gaming session at work. I have a Logitech USB controller and Stella installed on my work PC. I gave a quick demonstration for the guys at work and for the first time actually made it through multiple rounds of all five band members. This was the first time I realized that with a little more practice I could play this game for nearly as long as I could hold out. I continued my training at home and made my first attempt at the emulation record on Twin Galaxies. At just over one million dollars I knew I could achieve this in under two hours. Little did I know at the time that despite the excess space on my SD card in my camera, the camera itself will not shoot video beyond one hour and it shut down. I made it to right around three quarters of a million and submitted the record anyways, as I knew I'd make a console attempt soon. I was able to purchase a sealed copy of the game at a local game store for under $10. I planned my marathon session for an upcoming Saturday. My emulation attempt was comfortable, even at an hour I was having no issues with the game play and knew I could go on for many times longer that attempt. But I had already set my personal bar - I would be a fool to think I could topple Todd's record or that I could go for even a third of the timespan he mastered. But a quick look at the very few scores verified on the console side at TG showed me some prestigious names. Todd's $105 million was underscored by only one other gamer: Robert Mruczek. Long time head referee for Twin Galaxies now retired, I estimate he logged at least three hours on the game for his score just over $2 million. I knew I had it in me to beat his score and the chance to be 'sandwiched' between two scores from gamers of this magnitude was an opportunity too great to pass up. I rose early on a Saturday morning and had my console hooked up through a VCR. I set the tape to its slowest speed and wondered if I could even fill a tape? I had never played any game for much over an hour straight I figured but I knew I had it in me. I ate and drank in small amounts and made sure to visit the facilities before I began. I don't remember if I warmed up at all or just went straight for the attempt. I do know that my first game lasted only about ten minutes! Discouraged I took a short break and considered if I should even continue. My second attempt lasted a bit longer. I think it was about four hours in when I endured a string of at least 15 minutes without a manager and finally met my demise about 2-3 seconds from the vehicle with Steve Perry at the helm. I didn't care - I got my score. The bonus sequence at the end of each round allows the gamer probably 20 seconds to 'rest' or stand up and stretch (or urinate in a bucket, luckily something I did not have to partake in, though the bucket was at the ready). I do not envy 2600 referee Terence O'Neil who viewed my grainy videotape in all its glory for upwards of 240 minutes. An interesting appendix to this tale is the strange scoring the game employs at one million and multiples thereof. The 2600 apparently has trouble registering scores at that level and I am incapable of explaining it myself so I will leave that to the two gentlemen previously mentioned. I wish I still had my attempt (the videotape was turned into the TG ref and likely disposed of after verification) so I could rip the video out and demonstrate this bizarre method of registering the score. One day I should make another 60 minute run just for this area of the game. Or perhaps one of you - readers in the stratosphere of vintage gaming - would like to do it yourself. One of the truly great games for the 2600.