bedouin

A little off topic but there's an Atari monitor (presumably hooked up to an ST) in the background of EPMD's "Strictly Business" LP. It's much easier to see if you own the actual vinyl.

The Mac wasn't any more of a 'niche' in the 80s and early 90s than the ST, Amiga, or any other machine. I don't know what it was like in your neck of the woods, but in the US on the East Coast 8-bit computers were pretty much forgotten come the late 80s, and even the ST was rarely seen in stores or mentioned outside of being great for music studios. Writing for a PC or Mac in the late 80s would be the mainstream audience in the US. I sold my c64 in '88.

One thing I used to be able to do as a kid that I enjoyed immensely was playing a game like River Raid, Pitfall, or even Jungle Hunt and imagining that it's actually me in the game. It may seem odd, but the unrealistic looks of games based reality made the experience more enjoyable to me. So the abstractness of reality in 8-bit games was great to me (if that makes sense). But then again, I could take a game like Galaga and imagine it in a sci-fi sense -- that I'm actually in the ship fighting. Bad comparison perhaps, but 2600 renderings are a little bit like reality on acid. If you let yourself get into the world as it is you can have a lot more fun with it, and even admire its synthetic nature. I think the best games might be somewhere in the middle. Something close to reality, but with superhuman, supernatural, science fiction elements attached to it. Something like Mario Kart takes something we're all real familiar with and then adds in stuff we can't (legally) do in real life, like weapons and animal-like racers (or fungi). Fighters and first person shooters work along those same lines; SF2 has martial arts in it, combined with superhuman moves and combos performed in duels between humans and non-humans -- half real, half science fiction. It's like comparing Space Shuttle to Tempest 2000. Which one do you want to play? Forget Space Shuttle because it's a bad example. In general, which would relax the average person more, a futuristic space shooter, or a flight simulator? A flight simulator or something like Raiden? Games that get really close to reality appeal to those who can do something in reality, and those folks usually do it. Even stuff like Madden gives you reality and fiction, the fiction part being that you're adept enough to oversee a NFL team. EA Flag Football will never sell like something with NFL teams in it.

You could buy iPod batteries on-line as long as I can remember. Most of them even came with take apart and installation instructions too, if not on-line videos. That was before the class-action suit. The one-year warranty for my iPod is about to expire and I doubt I will buy Applecare for it. If the hard drive fails, I could probably swap it myself even (maybe with a bigger drive). The guides are all on-line.

They probably don't even have the part in to give to you. They're assembled somewhere else, aren't they?

Local Craigslist.

As someone whose spent a lot of time trying to archive rotted tapes to digital formats, I really suggest you guys rip those tapes to CD; I'm assuming you could play the ripped CD audio copy through the Supercharger just fine. Each time you run that tape through it's degrading slightly and in some cases the magnetic coating can come off entirely. It would be a good idea not to run these tapes through a player at all.

Three reel to reel tape decks; one half track two quarter track. Both are used for archiving old tapes semi-reguraly. Commodore 64 (breadbox) and 1541 drive. A Macintosh Classic II (1991) -- I don't really consider this retro. I don't consider vinyl retro either, since they're still actively used and in mass production.

Yeah, but getting most (US released anyway) SMS games isn't that difficult -- kind of like the 7800, Jag, or Lynx. The NES has 1000s of (mostly trash) titles. SMS has fewer games but they were generally average to good quality with a few duds here and there

The SMS didn't do well in the US because Nintendo had a monopoly on third party licensing. That meant even if let's say -- Komani wanted to put Castlevania on SMS they couldn't. Now look at the rare cases where identical titles were released for SMS and NES and it was clear who the winner was (Double Dragon, specifically). I had an awesome SMS collection as a kid: probably thirty games, the arcade stick, 3D glasses, boxes for everything in pristine condition . . . Considering how hard that stuff would be to find again in the US I really regret selling it all in the early 90s. It was VERY cool discovering the emu scene in the late 90s though and playing tons of European titles I never knew existed.

I traded an Amiga 500 for a compact Macintosh earlier this year that reeked of smoke, especially when it was turned on and the fans started blowing. I also bought a car from a smoker once and the smell went away after a while. Not a big deal.

I had F16 Flying Falcon for my SMS; I think I pretty clearly remember paying $29 for it at Toys R Us, but I could be wrong. And yeah it sucked. I only bought it because I wanted to have a game on a card.

Off topic. I was an SMS fan growing up but never really thought of this: what was the actual reason for Sega providing some games on cards and some on cartridges? They were admittedly cool looking at the time, but from a practicality stand point, why did they exist? The card slot did serve as the interface port for the 3D glasses though . . .

Shanghai was released by Sega on SMS. Not sure what this is; looks like a bootleg of some sort.

An RCA cable is probably sturdier than those flimsy pieces of shit anyway. I wore out a couple of those as a kid, on my c64 and 7800.

Yeah, I agree. When I said "only way to play" I meant that literally in the Jaguar's case.

Buy a Jaguar. It's the only way to play the system really.

Eh, the GBA emulates the NES, TG16, SMS, and Colecovision -- I don't think the 2600 is a problem my friend.

For mine, I only need the Windows-only utilities if I want to put movies or GBA roms on the CF card; everything else like SMS, NES, and TG16 roms can be dropped on the flash card normally and the GBA sees them. For the Windows-specific stuff, I don't have any problem doing it in VirtualPC.

They usually come with a CD that provides all the software you need.

Sam looks like a slightly less gay Richard Simmons.

Kind of, but not for Atari. I was a Commodore snob and turned my nose down at Atari computer users, though not in a severe enough way to not recognize the cool things the systems had to offer. TRS-80 users were also on my lamer list. I also had a secret Apple fetish and would have forsaken my c64 for an Apple ][c at any time, despite any technical inferiority. I too viewed the Sears Telegames as a kind of lame knock-off. My first console was an Intellivision though so the whole console snobbery thing never meant much to me. The NES was the first machine that made me want to own a console and a computer; up until then the c64 was superior to any other console out there gaming wise as far as I was concerned. Now I'm a Mac snob since about 2002. I can't help it; the few Macs I've owned have been virtually problem-free and made me enjoy computing again just like in the 80s. Of course, OS X is a big (huge) part of that.

Another reason Jaguars are in demand is because there's no decent emulation of the system, and not enough demand for a team of developers to focus on one.

Donkey Kong for 2600 was fine for its time.

I'm looking for an Atari 7800 with two working controllers and all connections. The primary game I'm looking for is Food Fight, but wouldn't mind Galaga, Choplifter, and Ms. PacMan as well. I'm not looking to spend much more than $30 plus shipping for this, so let me know if that's crazy. I don't care at all about instructions or boxes; should be good condition otherwise though (and working perfectly most importantly).