onmode-ky

Nice pictures. I read through the instructions next to the screen, and they're somewhat Engrishy--namely, the use of articles is not standard English. This is despite Potomac Mortgage being in Texas, so I wonder if their games division was either in Japan or just contracted with a firm in Japan. Or, well, maybe they simply had employees for whom English was not their first language. Do you plan on trying to find the game's Potomac partner, Star Invaders? onmode-ky

I actually think yours is more freaking awesome. If we're including non-rare items that have become rare through signing, my copy of Gradius V is signed by composer Hitoshi Sakimoto and cover artist Hidetaka Tenjin (who also signed my Macross Ace Frontier cover, which was also his artwork). In addition, my Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is signed by cutscene director Ryuhei Kitamura, and several other games in my collection are signed by assorted voice actors. onmode-ky

I've never even heard of this game nor its developer, but a brief Google search revealed some interesting info. Potomac Mortgage Company registered 11 trademarks in December 1980 (9 of them) and February 1981 (the remaining 2), of which one was "POTOMAC GAMES," one was "STAR SERIES," and eight of the rest were various titles that were to be in this Star series; the remaining trademark is for "AYATOLLAH ASSASSINATION"--how topical for the time, I guess. It was one of the two 1981 registrations, the other being "STAR ASSASSIN." Of the registered titles, KLOV only records two actually becoming released games, this Star Warrior and Star Invaders. I guess the mortgage company's games division was a failure and got closed before *ahem* all their Stars lined up. onmode-ky

I'm not aware of any free PSP games (outside of demos), whether free for PS+ or just in general. For the PSV's first birthday a couple of months ago, though, for one week, SCEA let everyone (i.e., not just PS+ subscribers) permanently add Patapon, Patchwork Heroes, Piyotama, and the PS1 RPG Wild ARMs to their Download Lists for free. It couldn't be done from the PS3's PS Store, but you could get the games from either a PSV or the Media Go PC application (support program for the PSP and certain Sony portable media devices). I don't know whether they were downloadable from the PSP's PS Store. At any rate, that's the most recent incidence of free PSP games I can think of on the PS Store. If I remember correctly, Mega Man X Maverick Hunter was free for PS+ at around the same time, as well. For any AtariAger with a PSV, I absolutely recommend Super Icon's PlayStation Mobile platformer Life of Pixel. It's $2 for 9 worlds, 8 levels long each, based on retro gaming systems, ranging from the ZX81 (there's a strong British bent to the machine selection, given the developer's location) to the Sega Master System, whose world is unlocked by collecting all the gems from the previous 8 worlds. The SMS world was added in an update to the game in February, which also included music specific to each game system. I usually don't go for platformers, but this one was a lot of fun even for me. onmode-ky

Okay, gave a few more shots today. 166,400. Couldn't overtake the leaders, but not too bad for this B-52. Wound up fairly well past the first challenge stage, into the second area's birds. onmode-ky

A few posts above, back in summer 2008, I wrote about my findings looking into the technical underpinnings of AtGames' Sega systems. Namely, I talked about them being emulators running on an ARM-implementation CPU produced by AtGames/Digital Media Cartridge, called "Titan." In the nearly 5 years since, the Web in general (including me) has assumed that all the Sega (and presumably also Atari) anthology systems they have released in the intervening years have continued to be based on the same setup. I wonder if that's really true, though. The LinkedIn page for Sheng Yang shows that, as a longtime employee of Digital Media Cartridge, he worked on the Titan SDK in 2005/2006. However, it also says the following for the period between 2006 and 2009: These RK and RK2 chips sound unrelated to Titan, which was specifically described in its 2005 press release as being a 32-bit processor. Meanwhile, RK's description makes it sound like it natively runs Mega Drive/Genesis 68000 binaries (which does not necessarily imply complete fidelity, of course). But, I thought to myself, perhaps this was a project that did not result in any actual consumer product, and all AtGames' stuff really still runs in an emulator on the Titan. Then, however, I found this post at the Sega-16.com forum, containing an image of what is supposedly the PCB inside the most recent AtGames Sega product, from late last year (that was the topic of the discussion thread, and the author of the post with the picture is the person who started the thread). Ignore the callout text, as that could be pure speculation, but note the "SAT-RK2" printed at the top of the PCB. "RK2," right there, with what looks like a board revision date of the very end of 2010. To my knowledge, AtGames has never actually said that they are still using a Genesis emulator running on the Titan ARM implementation, and I don't think there are any statements from people really "in the know" to that effect, either. We have simply all assumed that. So, it could be true that RK/RK2 is a Genesis-on-a-chip that has replaced the Titan in AtGames' Genesis products (and seemingly even replicating its predecessor's inaccuracies, like the out-of-tune music). The next step in this investigation, then, is to try to wrangle a statement out of AtGames, no? For that, our best bet might be Bill Loguidice. onmode-ky

Not sure if you misinterpreted what I meant, but I was talking about input lag, not about having one double-shot bullet on screen at a time. Similar to the latency of an HDTV that's doing a lot of image processing. In this case, though, it's either a design decision or some sort of coding bottleneck in generating the double-shot bullet, because the rapid-fire gun does not have as long a delay between player input and the bullet appearing on screen. Which part are you referring to as "last stage"? I don't remember what came right before the challenge section--if that's what you were talking about. onmode-ky

102,900 This is my best score, but I got farther, passing the first challenge stage, in an earlier game where I reached 95,000. Never managed to get there again. I hate how the player ship has all the agility of a freight train. Even more annoying, the double-shot gun has noticeable lag between button press and actual firing, something like twice as long as that of the rapid-fire gun (I'm not talking about the slow rate of fire, which I don't have a problem with). The enemy design and wave layout isn't bad, but come on, there's a reason you don't put a B-52 into a dogfight. onmode-ky

41,500 Soooo close to reaching the Z marker of the beginner course, but a stupid crater bomb forced me to jump onto a rock twice. I've actually never played Moon Patrol before, and it was only maybe a year or two ago that I first saw what it even looked like. It's pretty fun. Also of note (for me), this is my 400th AtariAge forum post. That makes for another personal best in this post! onmode-ky

This is a pretty fun, if tough, game. What I've seen of it so far, anyway. Unfortunately, that's all the time I have this week. 135,700 Cynicaster, to belatedly answer your question from the Gyruss topic, yes, it only stuttered for Gyruss. It's MAME 0.144, and I was using the default video mode on a Core 2 Duo. I still haven't gone back to it to see if I can make the stuttering stop. onmode-ky

93,650. I don't get along well with the controls in this game. When playing on keyboard, it's even worse (I don't think I broke 30,000 then; switching to gamepad really helped). This is all compounded by the fact that, for some reason, the game stutters on my computer. Not only the game itself, but also the firing button, where I sometimes only get 2 shots at a time instead of the proper 3 when rapid-firing. I'm pretty sure the stuttering contributed to my quick deaths right after getting a new life at 90,000. I checked CPU consumption, but there was never a maxed-out core during the running of the game, so I don't know what the cause was. Incidentally, in the season leaderboard, I'm back with two identities again, onmode-ky and ommode-ky. That doppelganger sure is crafty. onmode-ky

Yes, the PSV LBP is completely new. From what I've heard, it's pretty much the ultimate execution of the LBP concept, because the touchscreen makes it much easier to do all the level-building, user-generated stuff--which is supposed to be the main focus of the game, no? Any narrated bits are just tutorial. Sackboy's basic visuals are bland because you're meant to customize him. As I recall, there are lots of costume pieces you unlock as you play the base levels, as well as a large amount of free and paid costume DLC. And, you can also just stamp stickers on him (and everything else) during gameplay. When I played the game with my niece and nephew, we didn't have any trouble making our individual Sackboys easily distinguishable from the others onscreen (we were playing the beginning of the first game in the series, on the PS3). Anyway, if LBP isn't grabbing you for platforming on the PSV, might I recommend Life of Pixel, a PlayStation Mobile game ($2 in the US)? I'm honestly surprised it hasn't been mentioned in the AtariAge forum before; it's a platformer in which the player character (a green square) goes through worlds, 8 levels each, based around 8 retro gaming platforms. The choice of platforms has a strong British bent (ZX81, ZX Spectrum, BBC Model B, Amstrad CPC, while the other half are Atari 2600, C64, Game Boy, and NES), but still, the theme is such a fit for this community that I'll be stunned if it really is the case that no one else here has played it. Granted, I'm generally not a platformer guy, so I find it rather difficult, but it's still very enjoyable for me, enough to speedrun the levels to the best of my abilities. It's also noteworthy as one of the few PS Mobile games to have gotten an update (fixed bugs, addressed the "leap of faith" level design issues a bit, added unique music and sound effects for every platform, and added a ninth platform, the SMS, playable if you collect all the special gems). The platforming mechanics are a bit more traditional than LBP's (i.e., not floaty, and there's no double jump in LBP, right?), so maybe this would suit you better? onmode-ky

Yes. No. We're doing the "You guys like Italian?" bit from The Voyage Home, right? onmode-ky P.S. For the record, I am not a fan of the reboot's Enterprise design. It pales in comparison to the stunning refit Constitution-class design by Mike Minor, Andrew Probert, et al.

Yes, Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness. It was announced alongside Time and Eternity and The Guided Fate Paradox, all three being PS3 titles. So it's just the PSX version? Didn't they release the complete version on the PSP? Persona 2 is a two-game thing, Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. Both parts were remade for the PSP, but only the first of the PSP pair was brought over to North America. What got released on the SCEA PS Store recently is the latter part of Persona 2, which was the only part ever released on the PS1 in North America. onmode-ky

I'm not sure how I missed this back when it was originally posted, but when you say "karateka" isn't a real word, do you mean it isn't a real English word? The same way "karate" isn't a real English word? Because "karateka" is certainly a real Japanese word, 空手家, meaning "a practitioner of karate." Just like how a kendoka (剣道家) is a practitioner of kendo. But, it's sort of true that you can pronounce it any way you like, considering the word "karate" itself is not pronounced in English anywhere near its proper Japanese pronunciation. It's not quite as butchered as "karaoke," though ("carry-oh-key," holy crap!). It seems the forum doesn't handle Japanese characters, but if you copy the ampersand sequences (up to and including the semicolons) and paste them into Google, you can then see the characters themselves. onmode-ky

Neither your "on" nor "off" problems happen on my PS3 (which is on current firmware). When yours boots, does it really require a button press to pass the disclaimer message, or does it work like mine where the button press just makes it go away immediately? On mine, anyway, the message goes away on its own after about 5 seconds (while, as I recall, the Wii's message indeed won't go away until you push the 'A' button). It shouldn't be normal behavior if yours just sits there waiting forever for you to push a button. As for your auto-off problem, have you checked your settings under Power Save? There was a change some time ago that split the auto-off capability into 2 types, Video/TV/Music/Photo and Game/Other, and perhaps the default for one of them was set to Off. I keep mine on 4 hours for video (in case I fall asleep while watching something) and Off for games. I tested switching it to 1 hour for games (which falls under Other, so it also applies for sitting at the XMB), and it did shut itself off when I left it at the XMB. So, maybe just check how yours has its settings? onmode-ky

Thank you! . . . It would also be great if my name were spelled correctly. "On" rather than "om." onmode-ky

There can be only one! onmode-ky

I've played this game casually in years past and thought it wasn't bad. But, that was before I made any high score attempts. . . . Heh, same exact complaints from me, though I think the direction-change pause is the worst bit. Pac-Man is faster in turns than the ghosts, but this guy has to stop and ponder the universe before he can move in a new direction. I also can't stand that the guy gets stuck on walls so easily. I'm pretty sure there was an instance where I ran into a wall and was then unable to move parallel to the wall, so I got killed. Almost the same thing happened to me when I got my high score: 26,110. I lost one man up through the second level, and upon reaching the third level, I couldn't make it through the ghost room at all and lost all my remaining lives. As for my "venture" title, I'm kind of surprised no one has mentioned Aquaventure. Is it because it's a prototype? I'd assume that would be allowed also, and well, it's on AtGames' Atari Flashback 3 and 4, too. Here's a screenshot from right here at AtariAge: onmode-ky P.S. Cynicaster's name is misspelled in the leaderboard on page 1.

I am interested in this mostly due to the novelty of the graphics. In both the story and gameplay areas, though, I am not expecting to be blown away. We'll see. onmode-ky

A correction to my previous post: 2011 was actually not the first time polygon graphics appeared in a plug-n-play game system. It has come to my attention that the 2009 Star Wars Clone Wars game I described in the fifth paragraph of this post actually used polygons, not just sprites, though I completely did not notice at the time I wrote the post. At any rate, it was built on the same hardware as the 2011 Golden Tee Golf system, and it's apparently not the only 2009 Jakks Pacific release that had polygon graphics. You're not the first person I've heard make this prediction (or at least a similar one), but I'm skeptical of the chances that will happen. HDMI will increase the cost of the product, as would wireless, and I don't think it provides any increased incentive for a consumer to buy a plug-n-play system. If there are already very few people buying them now at the $20 to $40 range, would a widescreen and progressive scan image really convince them to buy otherwise equivalent products for more money? There would likely be no increase in resolution, simply due to the limits of what the rest of the hardware could do, so it would probably be 480p at best. The nature of the games content would probably be about the same (licensed content based on established gaming genres--retro game content has not done well in plug-n-play lately, so we could probably forget about that), so with that element being unchanged and without the incentive of downloading new games that things like Ouya and the GameStick promise, I don't see HDMI-capable dedicated systems successfully reopening the market. But maybe you'll be right, and the toy companies will try the idea out. They're certainly looking for some way to fight the invasion of tablets into their space, and last year's "app toys" attempts were 90% failures, based on an estimate I read at a toy industry news site. onmode-ky

That's unfortunate, though understandable, what happened with the solitaire game. If you can pull it off, maybe you should try playing poorly when you show it to her. My reasoning is that if you can make her think, "Well, gee, I can at least do better than him," perhaps that will give her greater confidence in her abilities. Personally, I couldn't pull it off, since I know squat about poker (i.e., I couldn't control how well or badly I did), but I thought I'd make the suggestion. Good luck! onmode-ky

Damn you for once again bringing up the fact that you have easy access to a DBAC cab! A game that I have still never found in my area in the ~2 years it's been out! Actually, in all of the United States, yours is still the only one I know of. I don't think you'd be willing to fly me across the country to play it, though. I don't really have any arcade experiences of my own to be proud of. I've never played any games often enough to really be good. Well, I've impressed people now and then with actually being able to aim in pinball, but those were people that had thought it was purely a game of chance anyway. Admittedly, though, it kind of blows their minds when they see it proven that they've been wrong all these years, and that's fun to do. onmode-ky

If you're including imports, this could become a huge list, simply due to the sheer volume of games "hidden" by virtue of not having been localized. And then there are the good Minis, which are "hidden" because so many people assume all Minis are terrible, but like cimerians noted, maybe they don't count because you can't really collect download-only titles. onmode-ky

Do you mean the manual can actually be opened up while you're playing the game? And I'm curious about what you mean by "completely interactive." How is a manual interactive? When I put the Wonderbook: Book of Spells disc into my PS3, it had an extra icon, for installing a software manual, appear on the XMB under the game's own icon (is that how Sly does it, too?). I installed and ran it, but I didn't try to see if it could be opened while the game was running. Don't have the disc at hand to test, either. But, the only interactivity in that manual was the standard reading text and turning pages. I'd still rather have a paper manual, preferably color. And with details, not just the most basic controls. onmode-ky