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Mockduck

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Posts posted by Mockduck

  2. Posted

    FYI since this thread is getting interest due to timing in the coming weeks, I'll go through the OP and give it an update in the near future. I tend to agree with you Bill (above), but I'm not actually sure this is meant to be a mass market device, although I'm sure no one at Atari would complain if it was. Anyone who thinks this will be a player in the upcoming Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo console battle is unlikely to be proven correct. Doesn't mean the thing won't be pretty sweet though for peeps like me. 

    • Like 2

  6. Posted

    9 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

    Until Dawn sold the Playstation 4 to a complete non-gamer person i knew, as it was the first time he'd ever seen anything come close to an interactive horror story and something that let him make choices that effected the outcome of events. 

     

     

    He barely used the machine afterwards as far as i know, Starwars went untouched, Friday The Thirteenth dabbled with.. 

     

    But he played through Until Dawn numerous times to completion. 

     

    It's been a long time since i had seen any game have such an effect on someone who normally had zero interest in gaming. 

     

    I hope Supermassive find a return to form on the new platforms. 

    You need to make sure your friend is aware of their most recent game Man of Medan, it's very much like Until Dawn. 

    • Like 1

  7. Posted · Edited by Mockduck

    1 hour ago, GoldLeader said:

    ...

     

    For the record,  I remember the cartoon fondly, if only because Dungeons & Dragons came on next...So during Pole Position;  I was relaxing,  the paper route was done, bathroom breaks were finished,...I'd be getting my doughnuts or cereal ready for D & D...Pole Position was like the opening act, before the big event...

    That was the best! Saturday Morning Supercade into the D&D cartoon was so freaking huge for me. Wow both Qbert and Pole Position were truly truly awful cartoons in hindsight.

     

    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    29 minutes ago, zzip said:

    I don't think so in general, but there are some outlets and youtubers that seem dedicated to professionalism, and a lot that aren't.   But a lot of them seem to have a herd mentality where they will all praise a game to the high heavens that really isn't that great, or all bash a game that really isn't that bad.   And of course there's always questions of whether they give fair reviews to companies that advertise with them, or give good reviews to certain companies out of fear of losing access.

    Sure, I am mostly talking about the full time employment, benefits, and general quality of writing we see from places like Verge, Kotaku, GamesIndustry.biz, Wired, Forbes, etc. It is taken more seriously than in the past, where it was mostly hobbyist hype with a little bit of uninformed mainstream news outlets looking at "those video games kids play". 

  9. Posted

    This could be a longer thread than the atari taco thread. Some could argue that games journalism is more professional today than ever before, both in terms of quality of writing and independent analysis and opinion. The number of awful columns, claims, statements, and low quality bars is nearly infinite over the years. I mean, just gaming magazines from like 1990-1995 could fill pages of this thread. :)

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    The use of some words like "fad" and "toxic obsession" are odd. I mean, sure, if you consider something that is popular for a while then not as popular for the remainder of its IP life to be a fad, then most gaming is a series of fads. Fortnite is definitely a fad, as is World of Warcraft, League of Legends, etc. Why is that an issue? Also a little odd to hear about "toxic obsession" in one of the least mean collector circles I've ever encountered, that being Pac-Man memorabilia fans. There's lots out there for everyone and people have always been super cool to me. 

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    On 8/26/2020 at 12:28 AM, TACODON said:

     

    OMG.... the VCS will let us use chat rooms again! I'm glad I kept my AOL! Instant messenger here I come!

    You joke, but I hear Discord is a thing. Sort of the 2020 version of AOL IM. And yeah, Discord should run fine through this in alt os mode. 

    13 hours ago, Matt_B said:

    Does anyone think they're actually going to make the November release date?

     

    Let's face it. They'd need to have made at least 10,000 of them, gone through QA, boxed them up, and packed the boxes into containers that are now on board ships, without any of it having been photographed or videoed and shared with us.

     

    There's also the mystery about the '96' units that have been made, in that not even one of them has been seen plugged in and turned on yet. As such, the expectation is that they don't work. It might just be that they're missing a finished OS or have some easily ironed out glitches that they're rather not share, but it's hard to shake off the suspicion that there are more deep-seated issues still waiting to be resolved with them.

     

    That's my main issue with the Plex announcement. If the project was clearly on track it'd just be an extra feather in their cap - that people could either take or leave depending upon interest - but against a backdrop of continuing delays, lawsuits and an unusual level of secrecy for a crowdfunded venture, it just serves to highlight the things that they aren't telling us about.

     

    So, my recommendations to go with a Raspberry Pi or Windows PC over the VCS are more about pointing people in the direction of things that they can buy now, without waiting for a pack of unreliable shysters to get their act together. I'd love nothing better than to be proven wrong, and for them to hit that deadline. However, there are still more red flags than a communist party shindig about it.

    I expect that they will at least have an announcement on October 31st that they have begun the process of shipping consoles to backers. :) Personally, I believe they might actually get this to me before Thanksgiving, but we'll see I guess. 

     

    Here's my thought on the 96, been thinking about it: individual team members, venture capital backers, contracted QA workers, perhaps some IP license holders, probably some for their app partners devs like Antstream. That's probably at least half of the 96. Probably a couple to use for marketing shots, in-person press/pr events, and a couple to just keep around the office. Probably another 4-10 set aside for in-house QA and other dev work. Maybe (and gawd I'd love it if they did) give one to Jeff Minter. :) But I bet that 96 got filled pretty quickly. I bet they did send one or two to maybe a YouTuber or something, under a strict NDA, but I have not actually heard anything. 

     

     

     

    • Like 2

  12. Posted

    FYI I didn't actually plan to sub already to Antstream but I did over the summer. It's certainly niche, but is actually pretty cool. Got some obscure text adventure games and stuff too. Catalog is pretty small though given what it could be. Just a few hundred titles. Not a long-term $10/month option unless they dramatically increase their size and scope, but neat. 

    • Like 3

  13. Posted

    Wanted to bump this to expand it even more and say: For the love of pete, don't keep your removable batteries in your game devices when storing them period. Often nowadays there is no choice unless you want to tinker, but the PSP is not one of them. Had battery detached for about 5ish years now, have plugged in and charged just a few times for playing a specific thing. But yes I have seen the batteries expand and break inside of the psp personally, so don't do it.

  14. Posted

    19 hours ago, Chopsus said:

    Plex will be keen to push people into the paid premium subscription, like all of the other optional services being offered. It is sad that this is effectively an expensive box designed to charge even more money on a monthly basis if owners want to get full use of it. In the old days a cable service would give you the hardware free for such a “privilege”.

     

    It’s also curious that this announcement of Plex being pre-installed comes at a time when there should be a substantial number of machines already on their way to the USA for shipping to backers ... are those units all going to be repacked with a new OS that includes Plex?

     

    Regardless of what happens from here, assuming backers get their units, the VCS has become a lesser equivalent to the NVidea Shield, which does all the VCS claims, but better and with massively more content in terms of games, apps and streaming.

     

    I’ve paid the price of entry for one of these things, but I am not confident it won’t simply become an expensive wedge shaped doorstop.

     

     

    It is a bummer that almost all of the apps that come with the VCS will have a subscription cost if you want to use them long-term. That said I genuinely expect this to be the way of the world when the PS5 and XboxoneboxsXs comes out. Thinking we'll all be having to get used to this in the coming years for our video games, movies, music, etc. Still, Plex is genuinely great at doing some things, particularly at being a cloud personal media server. So being built-in with Plex actively planning to support the VCS is good news. 

     

    I too have thought about what you're saying in the 2nd paragraph. I am - guessing - that this stuff is getting shipped to California and then further OS/QA work is done. But then who's doing the boxing? Unless we are talking day one OS update, which I guess is probably not a surprise either. 

     

    The folks who blast the VCS because it's like this other thing they like or own isn't that compelling an argument to me. I mean, great that you've already been using a similar device, hope it's working out awesome for you. But the whole, "why buy X when Y already exists" argument doesn't really matter that much. Maybe someone doesn't already own Y, and would rather own X instead?

     

    If this Plex thing works out the VCS at the very least will be an attractive looking media server for my home that came with a joystick currently hooked up to my PC for playing retro games. That plus whatever other fun I get out of it is fine for the $320 shipped price I paid. I actually expect it to be useful for both work and personal stream use, and as an easy to travel with mini-PC. Sure, lots of options in that space, but I like this one. 

     

    • Like 5

  15. Posted

    Plex is actually pretty sweet, might be one of the more interesting partnerships. Setting up a plex media server in the home and running it through the native VCS OS might be a great use for it. IIRC plex can also be a pretty good way to get large files around. From the wikipedia: "Free Plex accounts can share their personal media libraries among a user's own collection of devices or to friends, and access Plex's content library of ad-supported video on demand (AVOD). Plex Pass is the optional paid-subscription service including synchronization with mobile devices, cloud storage integration, metadata fetching for music, support for multiple users, parental controls, live TV and DVR, trailers, extras, and cross-selling offers."

    • Like 2
    • Confused 1

  18. Posted

    There is a mild to medium inflationary effect happening due to the baseline of pricing being Pricecharting, eBay sold listings, Mercari, etc. It seems to have raised the bottom few rows of prices over the past couple of years. Additionally, finding that inexpensive amazing rare cart is largely gone, as people are far more informed and generally optimistic about their pricing. Combined with increased scarcity and the COVID impact on flea markets and retail stores, and the general push has been online and priced by group-think aided by some amount of selling data. 

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    3 minutes ago, godslabrat said:

    Thank you, I would be happy to clarify.

     

    I don't see anything released today that contains meaningful news.  As far as I'm concerned, Atari has been spinning the same two paragraphs of misinformation all year long.

    The formal commitment to "shipping to IndiGoGo backers by October" is new information from the GameInformer article, at least from my view. But it is largely the same information that has been out since the release of the test units from the manufacturer earlier this year.  

  25. Posted

    On 11/3/2019 at 3:15 PM, lazzeri said:

       So here´s the improved & expanded version of the Excel spreadsheet designed to help you with you Atari 2600 games.

     

       It works fine in Excel. Apparently it does NOT work well on Google Docs. I haven´t tested it on OpenOffice.

     

       Here´s a video showing what it does. Forgive me about my accent, english is not my first language. 🙂

     

     

     

       All spreadsheets can be found here: http://www.lazzeri.online/pub/Checklists.html

     

    Checklist_A2600_v2.0.xlsxFetching info...

    Just wanted to say that this opens, edits, and saves just fine with Open Office. I am an OO user for years, and am happy this worked fine.

    • Like 1
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