atari2600land

Basically anything I don't have. Here's what I DO have: Donkey Kong Jr. Super Breakout Centipede Galaxian Pac-Man Missile Command I want loose ones, cartridges. PM me.

Next shape toggling turned back on, plus a very minor code change. 2600tris20110828b.bas.bin

...or lack thereof. Check out what I can do on the keyboard. I made like two albums of nine songs each, all from classic video games. My second one is called ET-Cetera simply because it was an interesting title I thought. The cover is E.T. in a pit. The album doesn't contain E.T. music, but it does have songs from NES, SNES, and one Atari 2600 game: MegaBoy Compact. So, what do you think?

I finally think I got it working so it clears lines in one go instead of going through the well multiple times. Next-Shape turning on and off has been disabled (for now.) Tell me if you see any bugs or anything. 2600tris20110828.bas.bin 2600tris20110828.bas

Hi, I'd like to spend today's blog on a topic that I feel is important in my life enough to warrant a blog entry about it. The times listed for tracks on the back of vinyl records. Why are the tracks themselves shorter than the times that they say on the back of the record? For example, I just bought this record called "Happy Trails" by the Quicksilver Messenger Service. Side one is one track: The "Who Do You Love Suite". The back of the packaging says the track is 25:22, yet when I converted it to MP3, it ended up being only 24:31, a difference of about one whole minute! Anyway, I also got SpongeBob Comics #4. Haven't read it yet. I just got home and right now I'm listening to the track I just mentioned for the first time. I also got two Nice records (the band The Nice, with Keith Emerson...) I had to buy two, that's the way this weird one was packaged, two albums for the price of one. I got it for the "Five Bridges Suite." And I want to go back there next weekend, I saw Rush's Caress of Steel as I was exiting the store. I bet it will still be there, hardly anyone buys records from this guy although he has a ton of them. The place (I'm guessing here) sells mainly CDs and DVDs, but he also has a ton of vinyl records. Anyway, I got chummy with the owner of the place, he apparently knows I like Tangerine Dream and is trying to unload all the TD records he finds on me. To be nice, I buy them because I doubt he has very many customers, he thanks us profusely every time we stop in there and buy something. Which makes me wonder how he stays in business, especially with the economy the way it is. Right now, he's having a "buy 2 get one free" sale which makes me a little worried...

typo: "I won't be being doing that"

Hi, all. I'm working on another Magnavox Odyssey game. I feel this should be the game to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Magnavox Odyssey, so the Yars' Revenge game I advertised in the Dodgeball packets will be put on hold. I don't want to divulge any details about the game at this point, as it is still being worked on, and I think it should definitely be ready for January 2012, just in time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the design and inner workings phase of the Odyssey. To clarify, this is NOT for the Odyssey^2, this is for the original one. There are going to be some more things besides just the overlay for this one, so I'm going to have to make the price higher to accommodate the making of it. I wanted it to be $40 (for the 40th anniversary), but I think I'll settle on $25 or $30 instead.

It's clever that he has an "Outlaw" cart in him!

Well, apparently, the last time I worked on this I quit because it was doing stupid things. I had discovered that if you choose the 2 player option, sometimes the whole board will disappear. I discovered the cause of that and (I think) I fixed it. In this latest version I haven't uploaded yet, I added a "thud" sound to the pieces once they hit bottom and stick. You can download that version here. I have decided that since the way I programmed the pieces to fall if you get a line, it is kind of impossible to flash the line and add sound effects to that part. That, and I'd like the game to be as fast as possible since now it has to go more than one go-through for the lines if you get more than one. I'd love to be able to program lines falling down like in Chetiry or Tetris for GB, but I don't know how to go about doing that. You know, just one go-through makes separate lines go down the way they're supposed to instead of looping back through the lines again to recheck if there's other ones. Oh well.

Bug discovered and taken care of in the 2-player version. 2600tris20110824.bas.bin 2600tris20110824.bas

Well, after three attempts at changing the background later (I just couldn't get it right), I have decided to change the name of Insect Combat to Insecticide, which, by the way, is an actual word. I also changed the title screen to reflect the game's name change. Frogger for game.com still hasn't come yet (argh!) and my eye is beginning to hurt again (double argh!) and also it's hot and humid today (quadruple argh!) Well, at least one good thing happened today. like I said earlier, I got the background in the fighter select screens changed to say "INSECTICIDE" instead of "INSECT COMBAT." Since the game's title is shorter, I just put a patch of color at the end of the word to fill it out. I don't know what I'm ultimately going to do, I may just keep it that way.

Name change.

Should *I* be worried?

I was keeping this a secret, but I might as well let you in on it. Of course, this is subject to change and I could go in any other possible direction, but I just want to see if you guys like what I have so far. aliengreed5july282011.bas.bin

I really don't know what the last Wheel of Fortune 2 for game.com went for. There should be a site on ebay where you can look up past instances on items and how much they sold for.

Hey, Metal Jesus, do you know about the Planet Virtual Boy site?

Good news: There is going to be a coloring-book-type game coming out for the uDraw in time for the holidays 11/8 - bad news: It's not something your 5-yr. old grandson would like...unless he's into Disney Princesses. If I speak as though I'm advertising this thing, I'm not, I just like it a lot, that's all. Maybe he'd be more for the Marvel Superhero game that's supposed to be released the week after the Disney Princess game, although from what I heard it isn't a coloring book type game.

I was just curious as to how many games used the maximum amount of MBs for a Game Boy game.

Note to people who sell things on eBay: Just because it's rare doesn't mean it's worth a few thousand dollars. Case in point: Some idiot on eBay is trying to sell a copy of Wheel of Fortune 2 for the game.com for $2,000. Now honestly, how many people does he expect to be wanting to buy that for that price tag? What's even more astonishing is that he has a Buy It Now price of $2,500. Really? For that insane amount of money, I could probably get most of the Game Boy Advance library, maybe about 700 of the cheaper titles. Don't get me wrong, the game is rare, but really? You HONESTLY think that game is worth $2,000? Take it to a used video game store or a pawn shop and say that. You will get pwned. I'm not angry that I don't have the $2,000 to buy it, I'm just shocked. Maybe he's suffering from a bad case of Stadium Events syndrome or something. Now, $50 I could understand, and you may start a bidding war, but set the price too high and people will think you're a stupid moron and definitely not buy it. I even doubt DP's rarity guide wouldn't say that much (probably about $5 or so, if it was up and running, which, surprise, it isn't. .) And let's not forget, only about 300,000 or so game.coms were sold. I just happen to be one of the lucky owners of one. I wonder how I missed the ads for it which insult the people who don't have one. I must have not been watching MTV or something. But even the best companies have dumb ads. McDonald's has been running "I'm lovin' it" since the early stone age. But people IMO don't really give the system much of a chance. Sure, look at Sonic Jam. That game is a POS, but there are some that aren't, like Tiger Casino and Scrabble.