onmode-ky

Honestly, it seems like two different Blaze representatives, with two different views on the price, talked to Eurogamer and MCV, because how else do you explain this later article from MCV, http://www.mcvuk.com...neogeo-x/092841, which directly refers to the updated Eurogamer article (the "month-old forum post" bit is from Eurogamer's update) as being incorrect because a Blaze representative talked directly to MCV? Here's the timeline I was describing, with source links this time: 1. MCV reports on the NeoGeo X 2. Eurogamer reports on the MCV report, adding an update stating that the MCV-stated price must be based on a forum post (quoted by post #15 in this thread) 3. MCV responds to Eurogamer's update and says they're wrong, because the MCV price source is Blaze directly, from that very day (quoted by post #2 in this thread; this is the same link as in my paragraph above) The way I read it, someone at Blaze thinks the price is definitely 500 pounds (at least "on the cards"), and someone else at Blaze thinks the price is definitely not going to be 500 pounds. The former spoke to MCV, and the latter spoke to Eurogamer. onmode-ky

But isn't post 15 the exact article being refuted by the statement, "This £500 figure is based on a conversation MCV had with Blaze today (Thursday, March 15th). It is not based on a 'month-old forum post', which Eurogamer claimed"? I think the timeline goes: 1) MCV statement #1; 2) Eurogamer statement, quoted in post 15; 3) MCV statement #2 refuting Eurogamer, quoted in post 2. If that's correct, then the current tentative price really is 500 pounds. onmode-ky

102,530. Reached Area 3 (the game even uses the same "Area" terminology as Xevious). I first played this game a few years ago, as a part of Namco Museum Essentials on the PS3. onmode-ky

Hard to choose between Pac-Man (before Namco gave him blue eyes), Vic Viper, and KOS-MOS. Certainly among top villains: Yukari Horiguchi. onmode-ky

Great find! I found an article with more pictures of the unit and a video from Toy Fair. The claim that it's better than Jakks' Namco series because it runs the original code is interesting because: a) it implies the system runs on emulation, similar to Jakks' Taito TV Games system from late last year; b) emulation is not necessarily better than ported code, depending in either case on the programming and the hardware capabilities; and c) when I spoke to the programmer of one of the games on Jakks' second Namco TV Game, he said that they were not provided with the original source code by Namco. He ported his game by reverse-engineering it from the original assembly. It seems kind of a low blow to say, "Ours is better because we never gave anyone else the goodies we used to make ours." Also, having remembered that Jakks once announced an extension of the Namco license many years ago, I dug up a Jakks Pacific press release from April 2007 saying just such a thing. It didn't "really" say how long the extension was for, but a quote in it said Jakks was looking forward to "at least another three-year-run." So, it appears the Jakks Namco license expired in 2010, hence Namco Bandai releasing their own plug-n-play system now. Too bad, though, that this system doesn't actually contain any games not already in a Jakks TV Game, unless you count the skip-to-board-255 version of Pac-Man. Its title listing is the same as the final Jakks Namco TV Game except without Pole Position--and Ms. Pac-Man is still AWOL in plug-n-play since ~2005. Could we not get anything else from the Namco Museum series? onmode-ky P.S. I'm curious, too, about whether it's a 4-way or 8-way stick. The latter would suck for the Pac-Man games; the former would suck for Xevious.

The buttons are very stiff in comparison to normal arcade buttons. I doubt what's used here is used in actual cabinets. It didn't bother me too much though as they get the job done and still have that microswitch sound (I can't stand silent, non-microswitch buttons on certain home arcade sticks). Hmm, I had thought that the stiffness would go away once the buttons had been "broken in" with enough use. Even if it never goes away, though, it hasn't had any noticeable impact on my playing as far as I can tell, so I don't mind either. Idunno, I thought the game was a whole lot easier with them. Heh, you could be right, but in my case, since I got used to playing the game without diagonals first, playing the later Jakks rendition of Bosconian with the 8-way joystick on the wireless Ms. Pac-Man system made things difficult for me, because now I had to get used to having diagonals. Seemed like it to me, unless you're talking about a different one. Here's the one I mean: If it wasn't NOAC, it was something very similar. Yes, that's the model I'm talking about. A number of second-hand sources have told me that it ran on a 65816-compatible Winbond microcontroller (oddly enough, I just talked about it yesterday in this post); there aren't a whole lot of chips Winbond made that were suited for plug-n-play gaming applications, so this most likely was a chip from their W55V9x family. onmode-ky

Or that old NOAC unit that had Bosconian on it >_< Hey, I was really good with that rendition of Bosconian. It was my first experience with the game, and I became skilled enough at it to pass the 25th level after nearly an hour of play on one credit. The lack of diagonals does not hurt Bosconian quite as much as it does Xevious, I feel, though you wouldn't want to play Xevious on the 12-in-1 Namco TV Game for another, more serious reason: the locations of enemies got completely screwed up somehow when they mastered the code for that unit. The earlier TV Games systems with Xevious were fine, but the 12-in-1 with the 4-way joystick got a bad copy of the program. Incidentally, it wasn't a NOAC that underlay that unit with Bosconian. Actually, I think the buttons on both this Taito unit and the 12-in-1 Namco unit (the one you're talking about, which actually doesn't have Ms. Pac-Man on it and originally released in late 2008) are the best that Jakks has ever put into one of their TV Games systems. I think they have great feel and response, clicky and with no mushiness. I also don't see what you mean about white buttons being cheap. It's just dye. . . . onmode-ky

The Jakks Pacific Namco-series TV Games plug-n-play systems do not run via emulation. Very few plug-n-play systems do, since emulation requires the host hardware to be significantly faster than the emulated hardware. As far as Jakks Pacific goes, only the recent (came out a few months ago) Taito Space Invaders 10-game TV Game unit runs entirely through emulation (Jakks' Atari Paddles TV Game was quasi-emulation, and these two systems, though years apart, had similar development staff, Jeff Vavasour and his associates). Everything else is reprogrammed (i.e., ported) to run on the different hardware. The first Namco TV Game system (5 games, headlined by Pac-Man) ran on a Winbond microcontroller, most likely a member of the W55V9x chip family--mind you, I don't have absolute, documented confirmation on this one, but I'm fairly certain. All the subsequent TV Games in the Namco series ran on Sunplus SPG2xx-family microcontrollers, the majority (possibly all) being SPG240. The SPG240 was a workhorse in plug-n-play gaming, with a large number of products, from Jakks and otherwise, being based on it. More information of this sort, including a chart detailing which systems ran on which microcontrollers, is available at my website, which is in my AtariAge profile. The information is also in the first post of this forum topic, though it may be more difficult to read there. onmode-ky P.S. It's my 300th AtariAge post. My rate of posting continues to increase!

I've never even heard of this game before, but I thought I'd try some Googling in Japanese to see what I could find. Based on the game's Japanese Wikipedia page, I assume you mean the "Ver.9.7" edition of the game that came out in 1997 (over 2 years after the original release). The text describes this version as having adjusted the ball movement, "etc." Google image search led me to this picture of the case, disc, and obi: Was this what you were looking for? I didn't find any references to a 1.5. onmode-ky

If anyone has been searching in vain for this system, I've recently seen it stocked at my local Toys 'R Us. It appears its distribution is opening up beyond just Kmart. Still haven't seen it at any Wal-Mart or Target in my area, though. onmode-ky

Two of my favorites are Freekscape: Escape from Hell, by Brazilian developer Kidguru, and Mighty Flip Champs! DX, by WayForward. They're both very good puzzle-platformers (pretty addictive for speedrunning, too), though they don't play similarly, nor do their visual styles look any bit alike. I also have to give a shout-out for the poorly received side-scrolling shooter, Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags!, which has good design overlooked because many players simply can't get far enough into the game to see it (it was so hard that the game received an update to make it slightly less punishing). In particular, my favorite parts are the bosses of Stages 3 and 4, as well as Stage 3 itself. From the same developer as Ace and OMG-Z, Laughing Jackal, the Fighting Fantasy gamebook conversions, Talisman of Death and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, have been a great way to [honestly] play gamebooks without having to rely solely on the luck of the dice. onmode-ky

So no one has gotten WayForward's eShop title Mighty Switch Force? It should be quite good, I would think. onmode-ky

You're looking at old (and never official) prices. The prices from Sony are: $20 for 4 GB, $30 for 8 GB, $60 for 16 GB, $100 for 32 GB. These match up fairly well with the PSP's Memory Stick Pro Duos; the best prices I ever saw (i.e., recent Black Fridays) were 4 GB for $15 and 8 GB for $25. Incidentally, to clear up some apparent confusion, the cards with games on them (i.e., the packaged game software that will be sold in stores) and the memory cards are not the same thing. They don't even go in the same slot on the PSVita. That is not a good reference. You're talking about Nintendo's downloaded content model for the Wii and DS, which has always been more restrictive than everyone else's models. For the PSVita, downloaded content will be restricted to the 2 portable systems which are activated on your PSN user account (and you can deactivate systems and activate others, unlike with Nintendo's old model), but there is no reason, outside of extreme paranoia, to believe packaged-goods content will be restricted to a single device. Granted, everyone is free to be as paranoid as they wish. Not even that; the new Wiis no longer have backwards compatibility. Read the blue-highlighted text on the side of the packaging. The 3DS does play DS cartridges, though. onmode-ky

Not only do I know I'm the only one here doing so, but I believe there is a very good chance I am the only person in the entire world, with the possible exception of Japan, who has 2005's School Rumble: Nee-san Jiken Desu! in the UMD drive right now. And yes, it was in there before this topic was started. onmode-ky

Actually, while I think GameStops in my area have completely abandoned the PSP (at least as far as new material), the machine still lives on at other local retailers. Best Buys, Targets, and Wal-Marts in the area still stock both hardware and games, new. Sure, the selection isn't so hot, but it exists. It's already out. Its release date was early November. The UMD version seems to have limited distribution, though. Where were you looking? Since the Ys titles (and pretty much everything else by XSEED) were niche releases, they just about never appeared in places other than gaming-specific shops. The smaller publishers almost never get presence elsewhere except online, in my experience. Even with physical distribution of PSP product fizzling out, though, you can still find a fair amount of its library on the PS Store, if you don't mind not having something you can hold in your hand. True, there are some clueless publishers who have never bothered lowering their prices in the Store, but XSEED, as an example, recently dropped a bunch of their Store content to surprisingly low prices. I think Aksys has some PSP stuff in the Store with very cheap prices, too. The Store also has a large amount of exclusive content, much of which is good stuff (I'm mostly referring to the Minis program; I currently own nearly as many Minis as I do UMDs). I do wonder when the final (North American) UMD release will be, but even after it's happened, software may still release exclusively on the PS Store, to minimize publishing costs. With luck, though, we'll still get some of those Japanese localizations on disc. I think Grand Knights History and Hakuouki are up next on UMD. Don't expect to find them in a whole lot of stores, though. If that international version of Final Fantasy Type-0 does come to the US, however, I would expect to see it in the big box shops. onmode-ky

Galaga: 112,020 Bosconian: 176,460 I first encountered Bosconian in its [first] Jakks Pacific plug-n-play form, the original Namco TV Game, and on that system, my high score was 595,960, having beaten Round 25. Man, I was good at that version (which had no diagonals; there was a later version with diagonals and more accurate sound, though by that time, my skills had declined significantly). onmode-ky

That picture of the boards is interesting, because it differs dramatically from pictures posted earlier from another forum member's FB3. The general product identifier is still "AR2660," it seems, but the entire board(s) layout is different, and they've switched to a glob top instead of a fully packaged ARM. The earlier model has a "V2" on its boards, along with a date of 2011-05-18, while this one, if I'm reading through the blurriness right, has a "V3.3" on its main board and a date of sometime in July. I wonder how many of the earlier revision (which came in that E3-revealed awful, awful initial box, according to that post) were made before they switched over. onmode-ky

Some important details: 1. You cannot simply take the current hard drive and put it into the newly acquired PS3. The new PS3 would not be able to read that drive. 2. You cannot use the backup utility on the current PS3 and restore that data onto the newly acquired PS3. A backup image can only be restored onto the PS3 from which it came (though you can restore it to a new hard drive on that same PS3). 3. Your best option would be to use the data transfer utility (should be under System Settings, assuming your firmware is new enough (late 2009, I believe) to have that utility; I think the two machines may also have to have the same firmware version), which is specifically for moving the hard drive contents from one PS3 to another. 4. The new PS3 would need to be activated under your PSN account in order to play any games (or video content, a separate activation) you had bought on the PS Store. "Account Activation" (which also handles deactivation) should be under "Account Management," which appears on the XMB once you're logged into PSN. Since the limit going forward for number of systems on which you can play a purchased game is now 2 PS3s (still 5 PS3s for any games you bought before November 18th), you should make sure to deactivate your original PS3 from your account before taking it offline, so that it's not uselessly occupying one of your available activations. If you forget to do this, you can still do a "remotely deactivate all my systems" procedure at a Sony website whose address I've forgotten, though you can only do that once every 6 months. 5. As an alternative to using the data transfer utility, you could always just copy the game saves to an external USB drive and recopy them to the newly acquired PS3, along with re-downloading the games themselves once that PS3 is activated on your PSN account. Be aware, though, that certain games don't allow their saves to be copied. I seem to recall Namco Museum Essentials being one such title. Also, video content can't be transferred this way, though I think it would be possible to copy video content to a USB-connected PSP (one that's activated on your PSN account for video content) and then copy it from that PSP to the newly acquired PS3. I'm not certain on this last bit, though; the rules given in the Terms of Service for how you can move purchased video content don't address all the possibilities. onmode-ky

Or you could keep them on the list as imports. onmode-ky

Oh, I see now. When I tried turning mine on the day I got it, I tried to rotate it clockwise. It didn't move. I've discovered that if I try counterclockwise, it does move a bit and click into place. I have no idea what that is for, either. I thought for a moment maybe that was how the ball grip was installed, but you can't pull it off after (or before) turning it. What's different about Bubble Bobble's sound? onmode-ky

I still haven't seen this show up in any of the Target, Wal-Mart, or Toys 'R Us stores around me. Maybe it really is Kmart-exclusive for the time being. I also haven't seen Jakks' Big Buck Safari plug-n-play system (the follow-up to their Big Buck Hunter Pro model from a couple of years ago) anywhere, which is supposed to have been available since late summer. The Namco stick "twists" to act like a steering wheel for Pole Position. I'm not talking about the Namco version, I'm talking about the Taito. The stick does a "click" when you twist it, but it does not turn like the Namco version. I think you two are using different definitions. The ball grip on the Taito stick is fixed and does not rotate like the Namco one does for Pole Position, but when moving the stick itself in a circular motion, like from "up" to "right" to "down" positions, it makes clicking sounds as the underlying switches are engaged and disengaged. It's an 8-way stick (also unlike the Namco one that's in the same form factor), so when moving "up" -> "right" -> "down," you'll hear "up switched on" -> "right switched on" -> "up switched off" -> "down switched on" -> "right switched off." The sounds are just because of the type of contacts they use under the hood. I wish the stickers on the unit had been put elsewhere. In their current positions, they'll likely be worn off by sweat and friction. onmode-ky

Wow, at 8 years and 5+ months, this is the new winner for oldest thread revival I've ever seen at AtariAge. Er, sorry for going off topic. onmode-ky

After having no luck at the local Targets and Wal-Marts over the past few days, I went to a Kmart today and found the new Taito system there. They were selling it for just under $21. The bottom of the box does indeed list the system's developer, as well as their logo: Code Mystics, most recently known at AtariAge for their work on the two recent Atari Greatest Hits DS releases, as well as the iPad incarnation of that. According to the credits screen (cross-referenced with Jeff Vavasour's website), the staff who worked on the game were also among the crew who used to do Digital Eclipse's emulation collections on consoles/PC years ago, as well as Jakks Pacific's well-received Atari Paddles TV Game plug-n-play. Upon bringing the Taito system home, I played the games for a bit and also opened it up. If you want a solid indicator of just how new this system is, among the stuff I saw silkscreened onto the PCB were the numbers 201108. As for the content, if you haven't played any of Jakks Pacific's more recent plug-n-play games, the higher graphical resolution of this new system compared to the old retro models will really make it stand out. The new hardware is also powerful enough that it's running the games via emulation (the bottom of the box notes the use of Code Mystics' emulation technology); this is the first Jakks Pacific TV Game to rely on emulation rather than on porting (and the first non-AtGames plug-n-play system to use an emulator). Granted, I haven't played many of these games on original arcade hardware, so I can't really tell how faithful the emulation is, but they all look and sound good to me. The only thing that seemed screwy was some strangeness in the sound in The Legend of Kage (e.g., some sound effects seeming to interfere with each other). Well, Birdie King also seemed difficult to control (I think it was originally a trackball game), though I did manage to get a birdie once. Speaking of Birdie King, it and Puzznic are the two Taito arcade games on this unit which have not previously been released in any of the Japanese or Western Taito collections on PS2 and PSP (I don't know whether there have been other Taito collections). Now, Puzznic here isn't the version which reveals pictures of undressed women while you play, but that's okay. It's more disappointing that there really is no 2-player Bubble Bobble, as the system doesn't do the 2-unit linking that the Mortal Kombat and WWE TV Games could do. Can't win 'em all. One final note: high scores are saved when you exit to the main menu. There is also an option to wipe all high scores. And speaking of high scores, the default high score initials in Puzznic spell out, "Z-Turbo ga hoshii"; this is "I want [a] Z-Turbo" in Japanese. onmode-ky

Thanks for the link. That must be quite a recent entry at Amazon, because it was not in the results when I searched "space invaders" under Toys just this past weekend. Of course, that vendor is asking twice the proper price, heh. I'm amused that the back of the box misspells "Bubble Bobble" as "Bubble Bubble." When you say "their first version," if you mean the 2004 plug-n-play system with Space Invaders, that was put out by Radica, not Jakks Pacific. I never did find out who developed that one or what hardware architecture it used. This one is different and, from what I have heard, should be very close to the arcade originals. Incidentally, though it uses the same form factor as the HotGen-developed Namco "Retro Arcade featuring Pac-Man" system Jakks released in 2008/2009, this one is not by HotGen. onmode-ky

Yours is the first sighting of this product I'm aware of. Congratulations! I haven't been able to find it in my area, to my disappointment. If you could take a picture the next time you see it and show us what to look for, I'd really appreciate it! I haven't even been able to find it offered in any online stores. As noted in this post, this new Taito unit first appeared in the ESRB ratings database in mid-September, so it's very, very new, not just 2011 new. In terms of arcade accuracy, I think it should satisfy the purists, even though I've never played it, because some familiar faces with lots of experience making retro game collections developed it. Speaking of which, I hope the packaging actually credits them; Jakks Pacific used to do that every time, but some of their recent products have left that off the boxes. onmode-ky