qrysdonnell

I've actually seem surprisingly little of the Atari XP games show up on the secondary market. I've been trying to collect every Atari-produced 2600 cartridge. I didn't jump on the pre-orders for the first three (Aquaventure, Saboteur and Yars Return). It took forever for me to track down the non-'Limited Edition' ones on eBay (I wanted normal looking carts). I was sort of surprised that they went away and never came back. I've learned and now just preorder whatever comes out if it's game that wasn't released otherwise. Seems strange that all of these have been so limited. And looking at their product page I just now have noticed that I missed the Save Mary limited edition. Lame!

After forgetting to get them the first time around I ended up finally just recently finding them (standard editions) on eBay for way too much money but bought them anyway. So knowing my luck they'll rerelease them! I've had a goal to collect all NTSC Atari-made 2600 carts (specific to one of each game) which for a very long time was a finite goal. My life has gotten a lot more complicated. Like I have to decide if the Berzerk Enhanced Edition is a new game or not... I ordered it anyway although I wasn't sure if I 'had to'!

For what it's worth I have a wide variety of stuff in my collection ranging from Fairchild carts up to Wii U games, and I can't think of anything I have that I've known to previously be good that has gone bad over the last decade or so. A lot of the older stuff was stored in the crawlspace of a garage in Phoenix for about 15 years - very hot and dry for sure. I even have plenty of old personally recorded cassette and VHS tapes and while I haven't been through them all, I've never encountered one that doesn't play in a state that was reasonably close to its original state (which often wasn't that great!) Most of these have been around quite a bit, and never stored with any real care. I would imagine most of this has survived a lot longer than anyone planned it to, and I don't see any signs of any of it dying any time soon!

A while back I had a stack of old 2600s that I was intending to recap and mod and presumably sell. I didn't have a real plan other than to practice modding on them. I also have a bit of skeptical mind, and wondered if recapping was necessary. I ended up doing two units, both 'worked'. One was a 4 switch 2600 that worked fine, but certain games outputs looked a little dark compared to other 2600 I had (Yars Revenge was the one that I noticed it on) and when asking around people would generally mention recapping first. I got one of the kits and tested as I replaced each capacitor and none of them made a difference. I did eventually install the composite mod (just a basic mod I got off eBay) and then moved on. I have a non-modded light 6er on display. So this ended up back in storage. Next I worked on a Jr. I had. This one I replaced the caps and everything as it was before (I don't think this system had any issues) and then on replacing the voltage regulator (it came in the kit so why not?) I ended up frying something. That was likely because I didn't have a great desoldering equipment. I did attempt to figure out where the problem was, but it was beyond my skills. Stuck it back in storage just in case I wanted to troubleshoot it someday. These then sat around for a long time until I decided I needed to prune my storage. The composite modded 4 switch actually sold for $200 on eBay. I was surprised there. The broken Jr sold for a whopping $6.50! In eBay feedback the person who purchased it did mention that they were able to fix it without much trouble so I guess I didn't try enough. I did learn that it's probably best to leave well enough alone. Obviously it's a little different for systems with known problems, but if you are at a beginner level of modding it's probably best to not overcomplicate things!

I got one around the time it came out (don't remember exact specifics!) I was 21, grew up on the Atari 2600 and then later ended up with an Amiga 1000 computer. I was probably mostly just playing games on an Amiga 2000 at the time. My memory is vague. Since I hadn't ended up going down the Nintendo or Sega avenues, I didn't have as much of a reference point to other systems. My friends and I definitely played Tempest 2000 tons, that made the system worth it for me. I also enjoyed AvP and had some other games like Pitfall and Wolfenstein. Back then you had to buy everything with real money, and I was old enough that I had to buy it for myself, so not having a ton of games wasn't the hugest deal at the time. Eventually the lack of quality of a lot of games got to be annoying - more of a lack of polish in a lot of the titles than issues with the capabilities of the system. I did end up getting a PlayStation not too long after its release (I didn't get it at launch but probably ended up with one by Christmas), so the Atari Jaguar was really me getting back into console gaming after the gap between the 2600 and the Jaguar. Essentially the start of me gaming as an adult. From looking at titles and release dates I recall playing games from at least as late as Spring 1984 (I would have been almost 12 at the time). I did also have a TI-99/4A which we had by 1982, so there was some overlap in my gaming there.

I think we all know this is most likely the first step in the long rumored Spielberg reworking of E.T. to more accurately match the game.

The big question will be if 'it works' extends to the controllers. In general most Atari 5200 controllers won't at this point and 2 working controllers are probably worth as much as the rest of the console (if not more!)

They're all installed with the PCBs backwards!

I had one at the time and I enjoyed it then. Keep in mind playing games on a Gameboy was kind of painful. And it's not the sort of old school pain where you didn't know it sucked until something better came along. The screen was hard to deal with at the time. The Donkey Kong game was the only one that really unlocked the potential on it and was always my preferred way to play that title. If I was a click-bait YouTuber I'd say that this was the original Nintendo Switch!

I would have been all of 11 at the time, and I didn't know there was a crash while living it. We did end up with a TI-99/4A so I probably played more on that at the time, and we ended up with an Amiga 1000 when that came out in 1985 so I played games on that for the most part until I got a Super Nintendo sometime after it came out and also got an Atari Jaguar before getting the original PlayStation which really set the stage for my 'modern' gaming years. Sometime in the mid-late 90s when my friend and I started collecting retro (at the time!) stuff, we probably picked up on the crash and the idea of the buried E.T. cartridges. My friend and I actually had an idea in the late 90s of making a documentary to track the stuff down in Alamogordo. Our version was called 'Raiders of the Lost Carts' and we didn't really make any substantial progress being the name. We weren't actually filmmakers anyway! I think if you were 'a gamer' you didn't really notice. Obviously if you were in the business you'd have noticed, but it not as though there was a point where you couldn't play any games.

No I have an update. For what it's worth I did have an Elgato HD60S laying around and I don't think I got anything out of it audio or video - but as I was messing with it I was having flashbacks to all of the difficulties I've had with that thing to begin with and I knew it wasn't going to be a permanent solution anyway so I didn't spend much time troubleshooting it. I did, however, find an alternate audio extractor. The Tripp-Lite P130-06N-AUDIO works as expected. It's a little more expensive than you'd want it to be ($37 at Amazon) but it gets the job done at least.

In potentially worthless additional information, I have accidentally discovered that if I power on the HDMI audio extractor after Windows has booted it works. Doesn't work in VCS mode with that workaround though. (At least my kid won't hassle me to fix it right away if there's a workaround but it'd be nice to hear the VCS!)

Okay, so I picked one of these up because 1) I'm an Atari completist and 2) I could use it as a PC on my kids' desk. Currently my kid's desk has a pretty nice Dell 27" 1080P monitor that has HDMI but doesn't have a speaker passthrough so I got a cheap $17 audio extractor from Amazon but the hardware in the VCS doesn't seem to like it in either VCS mode or Windows 10. (It works if I plug an Apple laptop I have into it via HDMI so I know it works at least with something.) So I figured I'd ask around if anyone has found an inexpensive audio extractor that is known to work? Admittedly this was the cheapest option out there, but they all kind of look the same. I'll probably return this and try a second one, but figured I'd check here to see if anyone had any recommendations before I just start trying other things randomly. Thanks in advance! (For reference the one that I purchased is called "HDMI Audio Extractor,4K HDMI to HDMI with Audio 3.5mm AUX Stereo and L/R RCA Audio Out,HDMI Audio Converter Adapter Splitter Support 4K 1080P 3D Compatable for PS3 Xbox Fire Stick." manufactured by Dongjian on Amazon.)

I can testify that I have seen them in person at a Microcenter in New Jersey.

Nice! I'll send you a message!