Paranoid

What I hate about modern turn-based CFRP engines is they all use either 3D 1st or 3rd person perspective or 3D isometric perspective and have animated graphics. Simulate a pen and paper game with a top down tile based perspective - let my imagination work the visuals. Bring back Ultima III style games. Ultima IV started up with that paladin, "D&D doesn't have to be satanic," morality quest stuff - and Bards Tale made everyone else decide that it had to be as graphic as possible, all the way up to Skyrim. Not that I don't enjoy those games - but the more I go back and play old retro 8 and 16 bit RPGs - the more I realize that today we could do an INCREDIBLE example of a game like Car Wars or Ogre or any hex or tile based FRP game using this classic style of engine - and it would be awesome. Hell... you could do all of this - and have the actual results of encounters and rolls appear in a window on the display in full 3D graphics from 1st or 3rd person perspective... but I'd prefer it just to digitally recreate a real paper FRP.

I'd like to see how the wiring was done. I imagine it is a variation of the PMP Radica conversion here: ... but connecting a different keypad would be the tricky part.

I agree. I have a CRT lying around that will probably do the trick with MIST - and I think there is actually a certain positive to being able to plug it into a VGA CRT... the whole idea of recreating your retro experience on your 72" LED LCD kind of defeats the purpose to me, in a certain sense. But... the long term viability of supporting MIST with VGA out that requires core-specific frequency compatible displays... when MISTer supports HDMI... makes MISTer easier to support moving forward.

Did you ever buy the Mister, Zetastrike?

I see comments like this on the MIST Facebook group: Roberto LariJanuary 14 at 5:42 AM Anyone is afraid that Mist / Mistica are dead cause Mister? 4 new cores and 1 new firmware in these 11 first days of 2019, i tell that they are more alive than never : D ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I suppose you could always just buy both. I see the MIST as convenient because it is already put together, it has two DB9 ports, built in Midi Ports, and actually supports CRTs directly. MISTer seems like something between MIST and RetroPie to me - as far as what is required to get it up and running. I'll probably pick up a MISTer at some point, too. Why:D

With the DE10-Nano kit going for $130, then $59 for the DE-10 Super expansion board - before shipping, the difference in price isn't hugely less than the $263 USD for a complete MIST from Lotharek. A Raspberry Pi running RetroPie on the other hand, can be put together for significantly less than $100.

Just for the record, I was able to repair the Slik Stik and it works as good as new - and I've got an 8-Ball for the ball-cap instead of the orange ball now. I was going to upload images, but I guess they have to be hosted somewhere else for AtariAge. I'll post them on the AtariAge Facebook group.

In the early 80s/90s, I ran The Santiarium BBS/The Amiga Archives in the 916 area... The Bates Motel BBS sounded super familiar, so I looked it up to see if it was the same one. I'm fairly certain it is. In the early 2000s I put The Sanitarium back up as a telnet BBS on Sparc 5 for a while. It was cool at first, lots of nostalgia and most of the old crowd showed up for a while. But it is rough competing with Facebook.

I found you, MacRorie - and the check is in the mail (or, the Paypal transfer is in your account, anyhow...)

Is anyone making these for sale? I realize I'm about a year late to this post. I've got a CC2 - but I use it almost exclusively for Atari 2600 titles. Would be nice to have one that works directly with the 2600. Does it handle Supercharger game images?

I had 4, and at least two of them have torn bases at the bottom of the valve stem - which is what causes the unwanted directional input. I tried to replace one of them. I was able to get the ball off the top (and I realized that the ball on the top is basically just a ball-valve stem cover - what you might see as an 8-ball or skull on a tire.). I went to the local tire store and the guy gave me 4 stems - but he gave me TR-413 instead of TR-414. The metal shaft with the ball is too thick in diameter to fit up inside the metal inside the TR-413. So, I decided to tear apart the donor valve from the slik-stick. My notes... The top valve isn't threaded like an actual valve stem - where it connects to the orange ball. Also, the valve stem interior assembly is gone. It is just hollow - so it looks like you can't repair it just by swapping out an actual valve stem - there would be some machining required... I think you might be able to drill out the metal tube already in a valve-stem and then thread it, and then seat the metal ball and shaft in the stem. I've ordered some TR-414s hoping that maybe the interior metal tube is a little wider in diameter and it'll work - but I don't think it is going to without some additional engineering that may be beyond me.

I have 4 of them. 3 of them had the square head screws. Only one had a set of Philips head.

I feel like if you were watching me, you would have seen the light go on over my head when I read this. Awesome!

This would explain why for example - I can run various versions of Ultima 3 on various emulators on Windows with no problem - but none of these images, on any of these emulators, will work on my Nexus S7 Edge. I think you just gave me a solution that days of troubleshooting have been unable to resolve. The interesting thing is that on at least one emulator - I was able to get the register to update to a scenario disk that was on the SD card - but the emulator hangs at that point and when I reopen the game and change to the scenario disk, it is corrupted. So, it DOES write to the SD card - it just mangles it. Anyhow - I guess I'll look into putting the ROMs into main memory for Ultima 3 and see if that improves my emulator experience on Android. I don't know why I am so intent on getting this particular game to run on Android. Just the principle of the thing at this point, I guess.

Tempest, Space Dungeon and Robotron are all analog games, I think. Digital won't work when you're trying to spin around a 360 degree turret - if you think about it.

Lots of games are analog. Any thing like Breakout... but some might be subtle. I think Galaxian and Missile Command both benefit from an analog stick - but will probably work OK with analog. Centipede too, now that I think of it. Other games will benefit from a digital joystick on the Atari 5200. Pac Man and Miner 2049 are both probably examples where you may see your score go up with a digital stick. I have a digital stick that I made for the 5200 (the instructions are here on Atari Age somewhere, search PMP stick, I think...) It works great for enough games to be worth it - but there are some titles where you need analog sticks that may surprise you. Star Raiders will prefer an analog stick, for example.

Nevermind. Found it. F8-F12. KAT5200 remains my favorite Atari 8 bit emulator.

Not sure if development is still active on Kat5200... I'm running into a couple of problems. With Atari 800 emulation - what keys map to Opt, Start, Reset, etc?

Bill, I haven't logged in here for a while, but I've been around AtariAge for a pretty long time. I totally get the logistic and demographic challenges with the Atari 8 bit line, either 5200 or 8 bit PC - and in particular the logistic problems with the 5200 controller. I'm less interested in 7800 specific titles. The only thing that made the 7800 interesting to retro-gamers initially (IMO) was really that it had 2600 backward compatibility and supported the CC2 - so after the Krokodile Kart became difficult to get, the 7800 became the best way to get ROM games on original hardware. At the TIME, from a retro-gamer enthusiast perspective, the 7800 was post-crash before the NES rebirth and was that machine they couldn't GIVE away at Kay-Bee stores! I think very few players have nostalgia for ACTUALLY 7800 titles (or the device itself, which had controllers equally terrible, in their own way, to the 5200 controllers) - the 7800 became a retro-gamer favorite because of the CC2. With that said, it seems that these things should be true: Adding 8 bit or 5200 emulation to a Flashback should be technically trivial. A Raspberry Pi can run every emulator from this era *and* MAME, decently. The hardware horsepower to do it, and the code to do it, should exist cheaply. The controllers - this Flashback portable already has nearly enough buttons to replicate the keypad and fire buttons on a 5200. The biggest challenge there would be 5200 games like Centipede that rely on analog control and that would be unplayable with a digital d-pad or stick. Most games don't REQUIRE the buttons to be in the numeric keypad order. You just need to be able to map the keypad function to SOME button. Licensing 5200 titles SHOULD be cheap - because if you own 5200 titles, you're not getting ANY actual revenue for them now. If you could get them back on hardware at some bargain basement bundled price - it would be better than it being an intellectual property not earning you ANY money at all... Finally - while a lot of people just buy these as impulse buys for a dose of nostalgia - this community would jump on a hardware device with emulation of 5200 and an SD slot that supports ROMs. It would just be a value-add, maybe... a way to get enthusiasts to jump early at full retail price rather than wait until it is at half-off discount. Those ports of 5200 titles to Atari 8 bit, too - a lot of them solve the controller issues the 5200 versions experience with a digital controller. I feel like it could be done, almost as an after-thought. Heck, JUST put the 5200 emulation on there with no games specifically for enthusiasts and collectors, with an SD. That should remove the majority of increased licensing costs - or with a limited bundle of the BEST titles that are the easiest converted and would work best. Qix doesn't need anything but one fire button and a digital 4 way joystick. Instead of looking at the demand for it in particular, look at it as a way to differentiate a future version from past with a value add that will attract the curious and the collectors. /Sales Pitch

Just thought about this some more, and when I downloaded it, I thought to myself, "That was super quick for 3GB of data!" Which now makes way more sense.

I really wish they would do a 5200 or Atari 8 bit PC version of one of these. The 2600 stuff is great, and all... but...

Dur... I suppose being that I have my Cuttle cart library on a 256MB MMC card, I should have realized that this is why I have almost 1.4GB free after copying the entire Games directory onto my 2 GB MicroSD card. Ok. Well... That explains a lot! :D Thanks for making the image. Great time saver - and I'm having a blast with the device. I can't find any real criticisms with it at $40.

Picked one of these up at Walmart today for $39 with a loyalty card. Somehow, I managed to get all 3.8 GB of the Arenafoot ROMset update dated Dec 6th onto a 2GB SanDisk SD card, and they all seem to work... I played PacMan 2600 original and Zaxxon Arcade... So... go figure... I'm not asking questions.

I haven't been a regular here in years, since I moved to Ohio. Now I'm in AZ. I'm setting up an X-Arcade Multicade with emulation and last night I was playing with MESS and this post turned up when I was doing some research. I forgot how active I was in contributing to the retro community at one point - and realizing that I had published my work made me glad I've never had any problems with my equipment. I just bumped the thread to keep it in my head that I've created my own documentation for recovery if necessary and that it is published online. MyIDE isn't that complicated - but if you haven't touched it for 10 years and something goes wrong and you try to recover without any documentation - that would be rough. Same for the CC2, when I think about it. After those two, I started buying the AtariMax 128-in-1 USB carts (5200, Coleco,) and things started getting very user friendly. But those early examples were a little primitive. I'm not so much of a collector - I like my games to be enjoyed at parties - and honestly, in most cases in my game room people gravitate toward the emulators I've set up. They tend to have nice front ends, easy to navigate, I don't have to hover over them and help them once they get going - and they're not so afraid they're playing with an antique. The retro consoles just kind of set the mood. The people I play with don't want a dozen different 30+ year old consoles - but they're excited when I show them how easy they can do it with emulation. If I started over today - I'd probably skip the retro consoles altogether. I just bought a new Coleco with video mod from a local vendor. It turns out my OTHER modded coleco has bad video RAM, the new one (also modded) won't work right with the 128-in-one cart (it registers an "always on" fire button in menu selection, but not in games,) and my original power supply is bad. The new power supply works with my 3rd non-modded Coleco and the 128-in-1 cart. My Gold Dot 5200 "Lifetime" joystick won't register fire button presses anymore, my Vectrex is a little flaky. Emulation isn't as satisfying, but it is more reliable and far less expensive.

My biggest fear is having something going wrong on one of these multi-cart devices I bought years ago and having to figure it out again today. I think I would probably just give up and go with emulation - it has come so far since back then.