Big Player

Cool, nice to know that my response didn't change from a year ago.

Any J. D. Casten game. Biffdrop is my favorite of the bunch.

My brother is an inactive 2600 collector. He keeps all his stuff boxed in a corner of his basement, including Quadrun. I can occasionallly get him to play Warlords, but I usually have to have Stan Jr and Amiee over to get him to play. And even that didn't work the last time they came for a visit.

That's good to know. It would be a shame to lose all those "When's the next Cinciclassic" threads.

This one's a no-brainer for me. Nukey Shay's hacks always seem to be the last word on a classic game. I though I was long over Space Invaders and I would never play it again, except once in a with MAME. Space Invaders Deluxe is so good I'm playing it regularly, now that I own a computer that is fast enough to emulate the 2600. (Yes, it was a sad few months using a backup computer.)

I love the idea of batari Basic but I haven't given it a try for two reasons. My computer situation isn't good right now. I'm borrowing a laptop that is too slow to emulate the 2600 at a playable speed, so I don't want to load games in my Supercharger all the time. Also, I'm waiting for the language to develop a bit further. Not that it isn't far now, but I can just see that more time will only make the language more powerful.

So how does the 5200 version of Joust compare to the 7800 version? I've never played the 5200 version but I own the 2600 and 7800 version. Stan and I played a game of it on the 7800 Saturday night.

The only drawback to Party Mix is that you need either four players or two to enjoy the games. We had three with the lovely pitfallaimee, Stan Jr and myself and so one of us had to sit out a round. I tried to get my brother to stop over but he had other plans. Something about taking a cruise on the Ohio river with his friends. Can't believe he gave up a day of Atari for that.

In programming the 2600, don't you need to use a lot of JMP's since JSR's will eat into your 128 bytes of RAM? Isn't this why a lot of the Activision games have a spaghetti structure to the code? I have heard that you have to unlearn all the rules of good programming with the 2600. Or is a JMP not exactly the same as a GOTO?

What? I've been a long time subscriber to the [stella] mailing list and I haven't received a message in months. Did it move? I just thought it died out. There had been a lot of discussion on the list about moving. I guess I wasn't invited to the party. 896821[/snapback] Well, you've missed a lot of pretty good discussion, I think - check the archives (if they still work). Seems like messages are getting dropped all over the place, though. Hopefully we move soon... 896886[/snapback] I guess I'm out of luck. I tried to subscribe again but it says I am already subscribed. Those dropped messages were annoying. I would get the response but never the original message. The archives are working now though, so I'll just keep up with the list that way. I've never posted a message to the list. I just like to keep up on the new homebrews and maybe pick up a bit of technical information on the 2600. (Most is over my head.) When the Stella list does move, someone please post about it in the AA forums.

What? I've been a long time subscriber to the [stella] mailing list and I haven't received a message in months. Did it move? I just thought it died out. There had been a lot of discussion on the list about moving. I guess I wasn't invited to the party.

Looks cool. Send me the ROM and I'll vote. Just kidding. There are too many cheapskates in the classic gaming community. It would be a lot funnier if I could remember whatever those Neo Geo collectors called us Atari collectors. Maguffins? Flannigans? Stinky Dinkings?

I had one of those Magnavox pong things first but I played it for about two weeks, put it in a closet and never saw it again. To this day, I don't miss it at all. Until Space Invaders came out, I thought pinball ruled over video games in every way. So I voted 2600 as my first system because it was the first system I wanted and loved.

Oh the curse of being held to what I wrote two months ago. What was I on? For the purposes of discusing homebrew development, I still say the Astrocade is closer to a computer than a console. No one had to reverse engineer the hardware, as was done in the early days of 2600 homebrewing, just to get a "Hello world" on the screen. People were making games for the Astrocade almost as soon as the BASIC cart was released. I should have been more careful with my words. You can't program an Atari 800 out of the box either. The Odyssey2 is still a console because you can't program any games with the Computer Intro cartridge. At least not any fun ones but that may just be a limitation of the console itself.

I wouldn't have a problem with Ads on Atari Age because I know Al would display them in a tasteful and unobtrusive manner. Speaking of which, Heinz ketchup sure is tasty. Unlike some other web sites, AA never had to hire models to attract people to the site. No need to have any free drawings where you get entered just for logging on at a certain time. None of that crap. But we should look at all sources of income. Another possible way to generate revenue would be product placement inside posts. It is becoming more of the way Hollywood does it in movies and TV shows, with traditional advertisements growing more ineffective. I don't know if it would work here though. What does everyone else think?

That doesn't scare me. I used to work in OTR, in public housing for 11 years. Been in Loveland for the last eight years. I was joking about the west side thing. I never really understood it about this city, but that was because I stayed on the east side growing up. There are plenty more classic gaming enthusiasts from out of town who will show up if when there is another Cinciclassic. At the 2002 show, there were AA members from Detroit, Pittsburgh, Columbus and I think some guy from Louisville too.

I told you! For everyone else, here is the thread. Post #333 has the lastest ROM. Hack 'em

Great set of pictures. I notice that Lord Helmet and family seem to be in the background of about every other shot. How big was the show compared to last year? This is just making my classic gaming show withdrawl that much worse. Why can't Philly get here sooner? Argh!

You sound like a bright man. Know of any jobs that could bring a poor guy from Sycamore home? 877296[/snapback] I wish. I just spent four months looking for a job myself. Finally found one two months ago but it's still a temp position. I do love the job though And yes, I'm an east sider. Went to Indian Hill for school but grew up in Sycamore Township (Kenwood).

Sorry, I think the view tally is skewed because I keep checking back to see if I continue to be the only one who voted for no wrap.

I voted for Nukey Shay's Hack Em. If you didn't vote for it, you haven't played it. Too bad the game will (most likely) never be released on a cartridge. It starts with the Pesco kernal, but I think almost everything else in the code has changed. So I don't consider it a hack. I haven't played all the games on the poll either. Very few people have played Ebivision's Pac Man since it was never officially released. And I'm sorry, but the original Pac Man would still suck if the arcade game never existed. Poor joystick control, bad collision detection, atonal sounds and ugly color selection make it a bad game.

Like my good friend Stan Jr, I've given up on the Cinciclassic too, until there is an official announcement. I'm not wild about holding it at Jillian's either. But I'll go, even if they held it on the west side of Cincinnati.

I stand corrected on Caverns of Mars, after Zylonbane's, Debro's and Cybergoth's analysis. My enthusiam that Caverns of Mars was finally getting ported to the 2600 got the best of me. I was imagining what the game was going to be, rather than what was in the screenshot. Not much, after a second look. It doesn't seem like there would be enough time before the 24th to correct the playfield. But I hope I'm wrong again.

Both look great. I wonder who programmed the games? Can you give us any hints, Curt?

I remember the crash. I had a subscription to Electronic Games magazine since almost the begining of its publication, so the crash wasn't a suprise to me. The magazine died in 1985 after it switched names and reformated to cover computer games exclusively. My subscription ran out with that first issue and I never renewed it. Whatever the new magazine was called, it sucked big time. I got an 800XL for Christmas in 1984. At the time I was ready to move on to computer games, which had more complex gameplay than you could get on a console. I wanted to program my own games too, though I only got as far as creating some graphic demos in Atari Basic. I don't know if the crash caused me to move on to computer games or I was just ready to move on. My parents and grandparents were even aware of the crash, as they refused to buy games for "that outdated system" in 1984. I had to use my own money, which meant I could only get the lowest priced games. The best crash deal I got was Missile Command and Defender for 39 cents each.