slapdash

Who remembers Imagic's "Murder On The Orient Express" for the 2600?

Actually... There's a picture of an astronaut on a spacewalk above the earth which is an awesome pic... Perhaps someone knows the one I mean? Don't know how findable it is... But if that pic is from an actual movie clip -- and I suspect it might be -- that might be just about perfect.

Funny... A long time ago I thought about mounting my MacTV into a monster truck RC chassis and hooking up a RC rig to the keys on the keyboard so I could drive it around the house with me when I logged things into my collection. I also thought it would be cool to get a bunch of Newtons, and mount them on RC frames, and write a program to drive them around. But then, I wanted to write extra programs that would send IR signals based on their driving behavior, but also receive IR signals from others and modify their behavior based on what others were doing. The idea was to see if any sets of rules led to coordinated group behavior evolving out of it. Sadly, both projects (especially the latter) were beyond my ken, in terms of ambition, knowledge, skills AND cost...

Heh, yeah, that was annoying, but on the other hand, it immediately sets your nervous system on edge, so you feel cranked up like when you're on the last couple invaders in Space Invaders, you know? Like I said, pure twitch gaming, that one. "ARGH!! I'M GONNA DIE!!"

Has anyone actually seen this in stores yet? In the past few days, I've been in Target, Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Best Buy and Circuit City, and I haven't seen it in any of them. At least there's another Toys R Us near that I might check...

Same here -- got it cheap, hadn't played the arcade version, and thought it was pretty f'n decent. Not a great game, but LOTS of fun. Hilarity... Funny, I didn't mind either, but I think I actually like Warplock better. Lots of flicker, crappy graphics, but pure twitch when it comes to gameplay...

My secret weapon was the Starplex button controller... As far as holding it, I'd wedge it between my knees, use my first and third fingers on the LR buttons (but switch to first and second occasionally during the 1500m), and have my right hand free for the jump button. I was unbeatable. :-) (But then again, I wasn't competing against Mr Spock, so who knows .

Keeping it vaguely topical, maybe use something like Tempest 3000 footage? Some cartoon would be best though, I think, but I'm not sure of any decent ones -- public domain best -- that would be perfect for this.

There's not much of a story really... I found out Chris had that way back when I was trying to figure out programmer credits, and years later looked him up again when doing Stella. Chris still owns the proto as far as I know (I'm not sure if it's really a proto either, or just an EPROM he took home), but he was nice enough to let us dump it for Stella, but sadly we couldn't use it. I was trying to get Atari to allow us to put on the whole gamut of protos, but it didn't fly.

Well, there ain't no schwa on the keyboard! You're right though, "ah" would be closer than "uh" phonetically... I still think it should be "play-ah-deez" though, as "ei" is usually a diphthong that is sounded the way we speak "ay".

At first I was thinking part of an Atari commercial would be nicely self-referential, but then it hit me that taking a commercial where George Plimpton says Intellivision is better than Atari might be funny to use, as that's ironic. I also thought that a scene from the Futurama episode where they have all the videogame references would be cool, but, you know, they'd sue. Maybe something from Tron if you're not worried about copyrighted material? You know, how about something like the nuclear explosion in T2?

Was this for 2600, or the "My First Computer"/"Graduate" addon?

I'd *LOVE* to see this as a book, though if it became too much work, I'd rather you 1) kept it to the web stuff and/or 2) wrote new games rather than burn out on that project. Reminds me though... Every now and then though I hear rumor of a book like this but from way back in the day. I usually assume it's actually a Magicard manual or maybe a professional (game company) doc, but usually get "no, a real book". But has ANYONE seen such a thing? I sure haven't...

It should be "play-uh-dees" I think, following phonetics.

Hanimex carts are the same shape and size as Emerson/Leisure-Vision carts, but you might want to compare the card sizes too. I'm pretty sure they're compatible, but can't say 100% sure.

Well, depends on how you mean... It's Famicom, not NES, like people have said, but I'm pretty sure it's a pirate cartridge.

Try to find Mark DeSMet's page... He made his own Imager out of an old portable CD player, and used a CDR "blank" (it's just the plastic, no disc inside; I guess they put them in some 50-packs?) plus marker (IIRC) to make the disc. Works fine; looks goofy.

There's the rumored Fright Night, but no one's found one as far as I know.

No, I don't believe you can play the Starpath CD directly like that. Version one had BIN versions of the games but not Version two, IIRC. If someone knows better, please correct me...

I'm unaware of any emulators that play Supercharger games off of CD... That would be an interesting feature, but possibly pointless. Dunno.

Interesting... I could have swornit was smaller, but oh well. And yeah, as far as I know Parker Bros just took Go-Moku and called it Pente. I'm not sure about differences, but I MIGHT be able to find out. Email me a reminder if you'd like me to look into it, but don't expect the info to come soon. :-)

I can't believe how often this comes up... Don't believe the CD is out of print, as there are plenty left. And for $5 shipped, it's cheaper than the time it would take to rip or download the games and print out instructions. Randy Crihfield P.O. Box 1332 Pepperell, MA 01463

One minor aside... IIRC, Pente doesn't use as large a board as Go or Go-Moku. I could be wrong though, as it has been years (a decade & a half probably, maybe two) since I've played Pente.

Yeah, I think that's my favorite right now. I also really like Jason Dvorak's. Others I dig are Nathan Strum's, Paul Jeffery's and Terry Wilson's (I like Happy Dude's style, especially on submissions 2 & 3, but neither one gets the whole feeling across I guess).

That was my first thought too... Wonder if they're adding bits on Vectrex, Colecovision, Intellivision... On the other hand, maybe this is just about retro STYLE games??? Hope not...