AussieAtari

You have my ultimate dream Pinball - Dr. Who, what a machine and so very hard to find one to play and even rarer to find one to purchase.

Dream Shopper - sounds like a game my shop-a-holic wife may enjoy. I'll have to give it a spin over the weekend.

The collars can be tight but a gentle twist should have them on nice and snug. The posts are all pretty much a standard length and there is usually a fair bit of room in the female socket to accomodate a longer plug (sounds a bit suggestive really - Ohherr Matron!).

Some support as to why I voted for Australia (edit from a recent major daily newspaper article): Current Australian-produced games include Heroes of the Pacific, Tribes: Vengeance, Powerslide, Dirt Track Racing, Destroy All Humans, Transformers, Test Drive Unlimited, Transformers, Le Mans 24 Hours, Grand Prix Challenge and Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. And don't forget Australia's oldest and most well-known game studio Melbourne House, which developed hits including The Hobbit and Way of the Exploding Fist for 1980s home computers and is now (unfortunately owned by Atari). Ty the Tasmanian Tiger is one of the Australian gaming industry's biggest success stories. The series has sold more than 2 million copies and the producers of The Simpsons are working on an animated TV show. High-profile Australian titles in development include Destroy All Humans 2 (Pandemic), Hellboy (Krome), The Legend of Spyro (Krome), Medieval II: Total War (The Creative Assembly), LA Noir (Team Bondi), Barnyard (THQ) and Unleash the Fury (Auran). "Australia is seen by many publishers as a good five-year plan. For the foreseeable future, the incredible talent that's down here, the cultural meshing, the quality and the price means it's a great place to (make games)." So, although my vote was a bit tongue-in-cheek and very parochial, there is some justified pride in our local games.

Australia!

I love the graph!!!!! My list (all in perfect working order): Atari 2600 - Woody 6 switch, Woody 4 switch, Vader, Rainbow & Jnr Atari 7800 Lynx II XEGS STFM Intellivision Colecovision (with expansion module 2 & Multi Cart) Vectrex (with VecFlash) NES SNES (with arcade stick) N64 GBC GBA SP DS DS Lite 2 X Master System Master System 2 2 X Mega Drive 2 X Mega Drive 2 (with arcade stick) Saturn DreamCast Game Gear Commodore 64 Commodore 64 (later model) 2 X Amiga 500 Spectrum 64K TI99/4A 5 X various Apple IIe 2 X Apple IIc 5 X Apple MACs (Colour Classic, 2 X SE & 2 X Classics) 5 X TRS-80 CoCo (all 64Kb) 5 X networked PCs The item on top of my wish list - Atari 5800, seems to be quite rare in Oz.

That's correct. A higher quality cable will always provide better signal simply due to thicker wire and better shielding which results in a stronger signal with less interference.

Dave, What screens are you running in your home-made cocktail cabs?

And Mr. Kizza had me thinking I was strange, heck I voted "normal" on that poll last week! I was curious and liked what I saw Karri, looking forward to the official release. Will the cart be available through AA?

I have two Lynx 2's and you cannot look at the screen straight on but with it slightly angled away from you. And, it's not just blind ol' four-eyes me, anyone else who uses them holds them the same way. The model 2 sun screen forces you to hold the unit at the same angle so I was thinking it was just a given.

I don't have an original cab but would love to have one, I'm in the (slow) process of building a Ms Pacman MAME cocktail unit and Crazy Climber is killing me with jealousy!!!!

I have not heard of these "good sets", could you eleborate for the ignorant please JB?

Does the model 1 Lynx suffer from having to view the screen at an angle like with the model 2?

I don't think that's true. Half-Life for the Dreamcast was almost finished, and was pulled from release because the Dreamcast was discontinued before it came out. Porting a complex game like HL is *not* something that a homebrew coder would be able to do, especially since the source code was not public. I think you might be thinking of the many other PC ports, like Doom or Quake. Another unreleased game that you can find on the net is Propeller Arena. It's kind of a simplified, arcadey version of Crimson Skies. And now, a question of morals and ethics: is it wrong to pass around Dreamcast ISOs on the internet? Sure, it's copyright infringement and technically illegal, but since they aren't for sale anymore, and Sega is not supporting the Dreamcast, is it *wrong*? One thing I don't understand is that why, with it being so cheap to set up an on-line store, aren't the owners of the ROMs making them commercially available on the web? Sure the market is small but 100% on the web and as long as the cost of the downloads was kept low (Wii?) surely there would be enough buyers to make it profitable? Companies such as TI, Atari (for the 8 & 16 bit software), Apple (same as for Atari), many software houses and Valve (for the likes of the DC Half-Life) remain owners of their IP and yet don't seem to want to profit from their dormant assets - I call that weird.

You have Half-Life for the DC?!? Where did you get it from?

Out of interest, and not having a model 1 myself, why do you prefer the I over the II?

Stop, please - you're killing me with envy!!!!!!! Looking forward to the pictures when all is done.

Really? I remember buying a Genesis specifically so I could get Altered Beast (that and Toe Jam & Earl). Tempest Being crap at it does cloud my judgement somewhat.

Oh, and occasional bouts of House of the Dead II with a light gun is just about the most fun you can have with your clothes on

Maybe it would have been easier to post a "what DC games should I avoid" thread as this thread (and others before it) really highlights what we all know already - that the DC is one great console with a great library of games enjoyed by those who appreciate fine machinery without the hype.

Minestorm is right up there for me, in fact it is on high rotation at my house right now. Here in Oz we had Combat then Space Invaders, followed by Asteroids, a few others I cannot remember and finally the 64-In-One cart on the jnr 2600 as official pack in games with the 2600, so I think we did okay. Blackjack & poker was pretty lousy on the INTV. I for one really liked Donkey Kong with the CV. Tetris (GameBoy) has to be one of the ultimate pack-in games, and Columns on the GameGear wasn't bad either. I thought Altered Beast was not a good choice with the Mega Drive but Alex Kidd was okay with the Master System II. California Games with the Lynx was pretty cool as it showed off the system quite well. I reckon some of the worst pack-in games came with the 8-bit computers, such as some of the "family packs" on cassette with the C64 and the demo tape with the Spectrum.

Thanks for the tip, I'll start searching for it and will hopefully finally be able to say to She Who Must Be Obeyed "see, this is why I bought them, not just to overflow my stuff into another room in the house!".

You must have more space in that room than it appears, or is it a gaming TARDIS? I'm down to sneaking new systems/hardware etc through the side door to get it past She Who Must Be Obeyed and into my den, I just cannot see me being able to explain the appearance of a cabinet - woe is me!!

Virtua Tennis is a big "must have", it is one of the best tennis games ever, only rivalled by Activision Tennis on the 2600 Gee Flojomojo, I hope you improved from 7th place in F355 Challenge!

Shenmue 1 & 2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica are the reasons I bought my Dreamcast and from there on it just got better and better. A great machine with a great range of games. I'm just starting to use my DC for emulators now that I have the keyboard for it and it amazes me that such a great machine was squashed, just goes to show the power of marketing over reality.