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About a year-and-a-half ago, I posted about getting my best-ever score in Vs. Golf in MAME: 16 under par. Since then, I've kept playing and have gotten back to that score and near it quite a few times. But 18 under eluded me. I'd always have one or two bad shots that kept me from reaching it. I also started playing the Women's Vs. Golf ROM as well. If anything, I think the course is trickier. Part of that might be due to unfamiliarity with it. But it did help me practice and get better overall. Today, after playing a decent round in Men's Golf, I played the Women's version again. I was doing quite well. No bogies. One par, but an Eagle made up for it. After 13 holes, I was 13 under: Another par though set me back. But I made it up with another Eagle at 16: Then I had another par at 17. Even with a Birdie at 18, the best I could do would be 17 under... But 18 was another par 5... and I Eagled it: Resulting in a final of 18 under! Finally! I managed to shoot 18 under in Vs. Golf! And on a course I'm less familiar with, too! My final score was 55. This is only one stroke less than my previous best, because that was a par 72. But I'll still take it! I kind of wish I'd recorded it - but I play this so often, I never do. I never intentionally set out to attempt 18 under. I'm not after records or anything like that. This is strictly for fun. Now then... anyone for 20 under? (It does make me wonder if a decent port of this could be made on the 2600. Maybe with bus-stuffing?)

Previously, I mentioned at the very end of this post: That's not the only problem anymore. You see, I've been testing the Trak-Ball™ hacks on it. Why have I been testing them? Well I wouldn't have wanted to go to the trouble of designing labels for hacks that didn't work now, would I? The problem is... some of them just won't work on my six-switch 2600. What's weird is - some of them do work. On my four-switch, all of the hacks work fine. Both of my CX-22 Trak-Balls™ work with all hacks on that system. But on my six-switch, only these hacks work: Missile Command Colony 7 Nexar Reactor Marble Craze Missile Control Plaque Attack So those are all good. But these don't work on my six-switch: Centipede - controller only moves left and up/down. You can not go right, and you'll get stuck along left edge of screen. Millipede - Y axis is fine, but the X axis responds far too fast and makes moving/aiming impossible. SpaceMaster - same as Millipede. Star Wars - same as Millipede. And yes - I'm using the correct versions where applicable, and those that auto-detect are doing so correctly: So between that, and the problem with needing to have an AtariVox continually plugged in, I'm a-guessin' something is amiss with my 2600. I'm observant like that. So that means... I have to pull my 2600 apart. Again. I'm assuming this is a RIOT problem again. But I'm not sure. So I'll have to do some chip swapping to find out. Ugh. But it won't happen anytime soon. I just got this thing put back together and I'm not inclined to go tearing it all apart right now. But while I'm here, I do have some observations on the Trak-Ball™ hacks. These aren't reviews, as such. Since for one thing, I only review games that I have on actual, released carts. Not fake renders. Plus, I have a gazillion other reviews to write before I get to these. So consider this a warm-up. For these first six games - playing them with a Trak-Ball™ is transformative, and these are "must-buys" when they're available: Missile Command - I already reviewed Missile Command, so check my comments there. Reactor - This is one of my favorite unsung 2600 titles, and this hack really lets it shine the way it always should have. It brings a lot of the arcade feel back to this title, and the controls are superb. Centipede; Millipede - Both are dramatically more playable (and fun!). If I had any complaint, the controls may be just a touch too fast. However, I'm perfectly willing to accept that perception is due to how bad I am at both games. The Challenge of Nexar; Colony 7 - Both feel like they should have always been Trak-Ball™ games. They almost play like entirely different games - the hacks are really that good. Less successful are: Marble Craze - Just to be clear, the Trak-Ball™ is a noticeable improvement over using paddles. That said, I wish braking was more forgiving. I keep meaning to just slow down, and end up going over the edge. A lot. I'm not sure how to fix that. Some of it is due to the nature of a Trak-Ball™ being a free-form analog control, and some of the maze layouts being designed for you to go dead-straight vertically or horizontally to get through them. Rolling a Trak-Ball™ in a dead-straight line is next-to-impossible. Stopping on a dime to change direction in a dead-straight line is even closer-to-impossible. But again, the Trak-Ball™ is a significant improvement, and makes the game much more playable. I think for it to truly work to its fullest potential, some of the mazes would need to be redesigned with the Trak-Ball™ in mind, rather than paddles. Or there would have to be some sort of AI that would dampen X or Y axis input, depending on the predominant direction you were heading. Or something. One lingering frustration that became more apparent the further I got into the game, is that it's not always clear what constitutes a path leading offscreen, since instead of having the path's color extend to the edge of the frame, there's a band of "falling to your death" color at the edge, such as the blue on the right side of the Berzerk robot: To me, that says "don't go here". So I'm always second-guessing that. This is especially obnoxious on the Adventure maze level, which looks like it's full of dead-ends, but isn't. Finally, on the hack, there's a graphic glitch on the title screen (it shows up on real hardware, too): Missile Control - This is a pretty obscure game, and while the Trak-Ball™ moves your aiming cursor around just fine, the game's control scheme is wonky to begin with. Firing directly at the enemy works well, but then you're expected to ricochet shots off of huge rockets flying up either side of the screen. As the game progresses, this is the only way to hit enemies, and it's more guesswork than anything. It doesn't help that your range of motion is limited so you can't always aim where you want to. This is part of the original game, and the Trak-Ball™ can only help so much. Plaque Attack - Another game with wonky controls in the original. Again, the Trak-Ball™ works fine for moving you around, but Activision blew it with this one, in that you can only aim up or down. They should've made aiming four-way. That would've vastly improved this game. Plus not making it about teeth would've helped it be less weird. But hey... dental hygiene education. I guess. SpaceMaster X-7 - I haven't played this enough to determine if the Trak-Ball™ really helps or not. I tend to find myself wanting to stay in one spot, fire for awhile, move, fire, move, and repeat. The Track-Ball™ doesn't lend itself to that, but when you do need to move around, it works well. Star Wars: The Arcade Game - The 2600 version of Star Wars has one of the worst control schemes of any 2600 game. I hated it so much when it first came out, I returned it to Toys 'R' Us and exchanged it for something else. Gyruss, I think. By using the same objects for the crosshairs and lasers, aiming and firing becomes a sluggish, inaccurate chore. Having a limited range of motion doesn't help. The Trak-Ball™ does improve it marginally, but it can't save what was a bad design to begin with. Anyway... if any of you hardware-inclined types have any suggestions on what's ailing my 2600 this time, let me know in the comments. I'd really like to get this thing back to 100%. Finally.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I posted about a couple of Lynx upgrades I bought - McWill's excellent replacement screen, and SainT's Micro SD multicart. When repairing my 2600 last year, I ordered a bunch of parts from Best Electronics - chips, joystick repair kits, and so on. Also, I added one of their Lynx replacement speakers. Now - my speaker actually worked, but for $12.50, I thought maybe the upgrade would be worth it. But it just sat in the box, waiting for me to get around to it. Since I had worked on my 2600 yesterday, I finally decided to go ahead and do the speaker swap today. It doesn't require any soldering, just a bit of careful disassembling/reassembling. I didn't take a bunch of pictures this time, but here are the two speakers, midway through the swap: The top (clear) one is the replacement. The lower (black) one is the original. Here's the new speaker in place before reassembly: The hard part, is not breaking off the little plastic tabs that hold the speaker in place. Anyway, I reassembled the Lynx, fired it up... and presto! It... uh... has sound. I guess I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It sounded okay. After all, you're not going to get hi-fi out of a tiny little speaker. I wasn't even sure it was any better than before. Fortunately, I recorded a "before" and "after" video. Skip about halfway to hear the "after". This was recorded at close range with my iPhone 6S. So while not the best recording, it actually does give a very good comparison of what these two speakers sound like. Flipping between the two, the new one does sound better. A little bit fuller. Bass is slightly improved. But if I hadn't shot the "before" video... I probably never would've known. Again - my original speaker wasn't fried, so I wasn't trying to fix something that was broken. Anyway, if yours is broken, then I think this is a worthwhile swap. It certainly won't make the kind of difference McWill's screen did though. If you want better sound... get a good pair of lightweight headphones. (I've been using the Koss PortaPro for decades. They sound excellent, and have a lifetime warranty. I've worn out two pair, and they replaced them for the cost of shipping.)

A year ago I finally fixed my original Sears 2600. It had kicked the bucket in 2011, and after making do with a donor board for a couple of years, I finally got my original board working again by swapping out the 6507 and RIOT, plus installing Mojoatomic's re-cap kit. So I had my original 2600 (plus a CyberTech S-Video mod) all up and running again! But not quite... One of the first repairs I had to make back when I dusted it off in 2002 for the first time in over a decade, was the Select and Reset switches were broken. So I ordered a set of new ones, and much to my disappointment, they weren't the same. The toggles were aluminum. Mine had always been chrome. I didn't know at the time that the chrome caps were added to refurbished models - I just thought that's how the Sears consoles were supposed to all be. I knew mine was a factory refurb (that's how I was able to afford it), but had never made the connection. Unfortunately, you just can't go out and order replacement chrome caps. Those parts have long-since been exhausted. And an attempt I made to get one of the chrome caps off resulted in mangling it so bad it was unusable. So, I made do with the aluminum ones. But my 2600 never felt... right. My 2600 - with aluminum switches. When I repaired it a year ago (for what I hoped was the last time), I made one last effort to find chrome switches. Even if it meant finding another refurbished Sears 2600. But no luck. So I figured "Well... maybe someday", and went back to playing the console with the stock aluminum switches. Then, quite recently (probably due to my participating more than usual in the 2600 HSC this year), my Reset switch started misbehaving. At first jiggling it would make it work, but after awhile, it completely failed. So I was going to have to open my 2600 up and replace it anyway. Meanwhile, I swapped my console with a spare Vader, and kept playing. Then, this thread happened. And in it, AtariAger Osgeld responded to me asking about chrome capped switches - and he had some! They were spares - and I could have them for the cost of postage. A quick PayPal later, and I had the switches! Now, it didn't 100% solve my problem, because he had only one momentary switch, and I needed two. But - I was able to get one of my other chrome caps off with minimal fuss, so all I had to do was slide that cap over one of the aluminum ones, and I'd be in business! Three of my original switches, Osgeld's spares, and my successfully-removed cap. So today I opened up my 2600, and started swapping out the switches. All prepped for surgery. The nice part about doing a switch swap is that the main part of the 2600 - including my video mod - can stay put. The bad Reset switch is on the right. Some of the contacts in it are loose and flopping around. I had to scrape some adhesive out of the cap before it would slide over the switch. The re-capped Select switch. Since this switch was good, there was no reason to desolder it. The cap is held on with a thin strip of Poster Tape inside. All desoldered, and ready to have its proper switches restored! All done! That was fast! (No it wasn't... desoldering took awhile. I need to get one of these.) Close-up of the chrome switches. Don't they look sweet? More chrome! Including the re-capped Select and replaced Reset switch. Felt pads are back in place, and the 2600 is ready to be buttoned-up. Hopefully for the last time for a long while. I don't actually know what this is. I hit the button on my phone accidentally at some point. But it's kind of a cool abstract art thing, so there you go. And it's finished! It's hard to show how good these look in person. But what's even better, oddly enough, is how they feel. They're smoother than the aluminum ones, and they make my 2600 feel the way it used to, all those years ago! Before and after. So finally, after multiple surgeries, and many, many years, my 2600 is back! It's got its original switches again, and finally everything works! Well... except that it boots to a black screen unless my AtariVox is plugged into the right joystick port. For some reason. Whatever.

With Pong being prominently mentioned in a couple of forum threads recently, I just had to pick up a Pong console off eBay... I wanted one of the Sears Tele-Games models, because those were the first ones sold (I have no idea of this one's actual manufacturing date however). This one is in amazing condition, especially considering its age. It works perfectly fine, there's almost no wear to speak of, and it just needed a little TLC with some Windex and a toothbrush to clean it up. The left pot needs a little contact cleaner, but it's not bad - just a little jittery. The picture is very crisp, especially considering it's running on a 35-year-old TV. And no - the score doesn't stay on the screen while you're playing. It only appears between serves. But the photos looked empty without it. When the game ends, a checkerboard pattern moves around on screen: I guess this was just a way to let you know the game had ended, and was probably something easy to display. Plus it adds a little pizazz to it. It also came with an original Sears Pong "Battery Eliminator" which is still the coolest name ever for an AC adapter. I think Radio Shack may have called them that, too. Having never owned a dedicated console before, a couple of things surprised me: It's battery-powered. It seems strange now, but at the time it would've been marketed as an electronic toy, and all of those were battery-powered. But again, you could buy a "Battery Eliminator" for it. The speaker is built-in. No sound comes through the TV. Not sure why, except, again, it's effectively an electronic toy, so that would have been expected at the time. It just makes a couple of different beeps, and there's no volume control. I don't know when videogame consoles started using the TV for sound, but this better explains why there are unused speaker grills in the 2600. Anyway, it's a cool little conversation piece to have around, and it's still fun to play. And yes - it will be making an appearance in a certain Atari-themed comic strip at some point.

I used to play Nintendo's Vs. Golf back-in-the-day-when-you-could-actually-play-it-in-the-arcades. When I got into MacMAME (now 20 years ago!!!!) I picked it up again, and the best score I shot at the time was 59: That was 13 under par (the course changes, so the overall par changes as well). Recently, since I got MAME running again properly for the first time in years, I've been playing it again. I've gotten to where I can birdie every hole on the course... just not always in the same game. Although I just got real close: Just two more... (and yes, I did miss two putts). Admittedly, one hole was actually an eagle, and three were pars, but one of these days, I'm going to shoot 18-under.

Keeping an old 2600 running isn't always easy... My original 2600 is kind of an odd one to begin with, in that it was a factory reconditioned Sears console, with a light-sixer case, but heavy-sixer insides. Apparently, this is just something Atari did. It makes sense - if they're factory-refurbishing something, they'll put it back into the best, or newest, case available. In 2002, as I dusted off my 2600 for the first time in years, I noticed the springs in the switches were broken. These were the chrome-capped switches Atari used when reconditioning their consoles, although I didn't know that at the time. I thought they were just stock switches. So I ordered some replacements, only to find out they were the aluminum-finish ones instead. I was disappointed, but installed them anyway. In hindsight - I would have disassembled them, and kept the chrome switches, just repairing the springs. In 2008, my 2600 died. In that case, it turned out to be the hex buffer (CD4050) - which was a pretty easy fix. Thanks to batari and supercat who suggested that was the problem. Then, in 2011, it died again. This time though - I couldn't get it working again. I wasn't sure what the problem was, although the console had taken a lot of abuse over the years as the guinea pig for my mods comparison tests. I tried swapping chips with a working four-switch Vader, to no avail. Meanwhile, I used the Vader as my daily driver. In 2015 I bought a populated six-switch donor board from Best Electronics to swap parts with, in an attempt to get my original console working again. But despite my "best" efforts - my original 2600 just wouldn't work. Its TIA was good though, since that worked in the donor light-sixer. But its 6507 and RIOT wouldn't work, so I figured those were bad. But even swapping all of the donor's chips over to my 2600 didn't get that working. So then the donor board went into my original 2600's case, "fixing" it. But it wasn't really fixed, and I still really wanted to get as much of my original 2600 working as possible. Then recently, mojoatomic began selling capacitor and voltage regulator kits. Now, these parts can be found at Digikey or Mouser, but the nice thing about buying his kits, is that he buys them in bulk, and saves you the trouble (and shipping costs) of hunting them down yourself. Everything's just there in a neat little bag. Plus, he posted instructions on what to replace. And he also sells brand-new replacement power adapter jacks. Very nice! So, hoping this might have been part of my original 2600's problem, I ordered up some kits and installed them. But again, to no avail. Swapping the chips with the donor light-sixer still didn't fix it. Mojoatomic also suggested checking for cold solder joints and bad connectors on the IC sockets or cart connector. So, I spent a pretty long evening desoldering and replacing the IC sockets, and completely re-soldering the cart connector. Still nothing. At this point, I was about to give up and take up mojoatomic on his offer to see if he could fix whatever was wrong. But first, I tried one more thing. I pulled the RIOT and 6507 from the Vader again, and popped those into my original heavy board. And it worked! My Atari was back! For realsies, this time! So what happened, and why didn't the donor-sixer's chips work in my board? They worked in the light-sixer, and the chips are all the same, right? Well... not exactly. Since I first got the donor board, it always had a slightly odd quirk. It worked fine, but whenever I pressed the fire button on the joystick, the picture would dim slightly. I had hoped recapping and replacing the voltage regulator on the donor would fix that problem. But it didn't. Yet - the console still worked. So I assumed its chips all worked. But apparently, the RIOT is going bad. It's not bad enough to fail on the light-sixer, but it is on the heavy. So I was trying to troubleshoot using a bad chip. Once I put the Vader's RIOT into the donor-sixer, the dimming problem went away. I think the sequence of events went like this: My power adapter had some sort of problem. When it did, it took out my original console's RIOT and 6507. (That power adapter has - quite recently - fully up and died. So I'm sure now it was the culprit.) It may have also taken out the voltage regulator or a cap somewhere. This would explain why originally transplanting the Vader's chips didn't work. It may have also damaged the donor light-sixer's RIOT, causing the dimming problem. But I have no way of knowing that. In the end, I had a bad 6507, and two bad RIOTs. But now I have two re-capped 2600s with new voltage regulators and power adapter jacks, and I know they both work. I'm going to go through and upgrade my Vader and another four-switcher I have with those kits as well. I've ordered up the replacement chips I need from Best, as well as a few other goodies (power supplies, joystick rebuild kits, and a speaker upgrade for my pimped-out Lynx). For the time being, I'll keep the Vader's chips in my original console, so that for the first time in almost six years, I finally have a working heavy-sixer-in-a-light-sixer-Sears-shell 2600 again. Now all I need to do is find another set of six chrome-capped switches.

See what I did there with the II? As in Lynx II? No? Well... fine. I never claimed to be a good literaryist. I'm pretty sure that's a word. If I tell my spell-checker to ignore it, it works, and that's good enough for me. Anyway, a few years ago, I had written that I had dusted off my Lynx II and picked up a few new games for it. And while there were a few keepers in the bunch, after a little while the Lynx sat idle again. In the last couple of years though, it's had new life breathed into it not once, but twice, thanks to a couple of very talented Lynx hobbyists. AtariAge member McWill created an LCD screen replacement kit that has to be seen to be believed. The original Lynx screen was dull, washed out, and had a very narrow viewing angle. Mine was starting to exhibit dead pixels, too. McWill's kit puts a modern, bright, crystal clear screen in its place (and you can optionally add a VGA output, too). I posted about my experience with installing McWill's screen kit in the Lynx forum. The upshot is, it completely transformed the system. The games actually became more playable, as details lost to the old murky LCD screen suddenly became razor-sharp. It was like my Lynx got cataract surgery! That was a weird analogy. Maybe this is better: It was like the difference between looking at leftover pizza through wax paper or Saran Wrap. Uh... no. Look... here are a few photos, okay? Rampart, before: And after: And Awesome Golf before: And after: It looks a lot better. That's the point to take away here. If you want to see more, I posted extensive before and after galleries. If you want to order one of these amazing new screens, just contact McWill, and he'll get the details to you. For those who don't know how to solder, he offers installation as well. He also has kits for the Lynx I. So... after installing the new screen, the games I had looked better, but I still had a relatively meager selection of them. But this year AtariAge member SainT developed an SD-based multicart for the Lynx. As with similar multicarts for other systems, the RetroHQ multicart allows you to load any or all Lynx ROMs onto a single Micro SD card, which can then be plugged into your Lynx. From there, you just choose the game you want to play from an onscreen menu. The online reviews and videos of it were all very promising, so I asked to be added to the pre-order list. And last week - mine finally arrived! SainT's Multicart is on the left (the Micro SD card can be seen in the notched corner at the top), and a standard Lynx cart is on the right: Once booted, the menu system is very responsive and clear to read. A downside is that it only shows 8 character filenames: One thing that helps is that you can organize your ROMs by folder. Mine are alphabetical for now, but I may further refine this by games I play more often, or by genre, etc. A really nice option is that you can add preview images to your SD card to view pictures of the games you select before loading them. This is very handy, especially if you can't remember what game KISTENSC is supposed to be. Or in this case, APB, which is, well... APB. In order for the previews to work - your ROM names and preview names must match. The preview images have already been created, named and zipped for download, so you'll likely have to go through and rename something for them to work. In my case, I renamed my ROMs to match the previews. It's just as well, since the menu can't display long filenames. Also, you currently can't create your own preview files, unless you can figure out how to save images in the correct image format. It'd be great to be able to create your own, or even have multiple ones available for each game to show different screens or other information. Once a game is selected, it takes several seconds to load, but from that point on, everything works as if it were an original cart. The multicart is very solidly made - with a 3D printed case permanently attached to it (for the Lynx I, you have to get one without a case, or it won't fit). There's quite a long waiting list to get one - I was added to the list mid-May, and it finally arrived mid-October. But it was well worth the wait, because apart from a few unavailable homebrews, I have instant access to the entire Lynx library. If you want to read more about it, check out the this thread. To get on the order list, just post a response in that thread, specifying what you want. I'd highly recommend both of these items to any Lynx owner. They really do transform the system, and have really increased my enjoyment of it. If I had to pick one, I'd have to go with McWill's screen. I never thought a Lynx could look that good. But once you get the screen looking good - you're going to want to get the multicart, too.

Yet another mouth to feed: Huge thanks to Albert for hooking me up with this Vectrex! This is a pretty sweet unit - very clean, works great, solid controller, and it included several games and overlays (gotta have the overlays). I've been wanting one of these since, well, since the early 80's when I first saw them in stores. More recently though (like, ten years ago) Alex Herbert sent me copies of a couple of his Vectrex homebrews as a thank-you for work I did on the manual and label for his as-yet-unfinished 2600 homebrew: Man Goes Down! Unfortunately, I had nothing to play them on. Even more recently, I bought one of Richard Hutchinson's VecMulti carts, as I got ever closer to acquiring one of these puppies. Finally, it's here! Now I just need to get a microSD card reader (so I can use Darrell's Mac port of MenuMaker), and scrounge up some more games. (Hmmm... now Darrell and I both have a Vectrex. I wonder how Stay Frosty would look in vectors? )

Over my Christmas vacation, it was with a tinge of sadness that I noticed that the Radio Shack I had grown up with had closed its doors. My Radio Shack. I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised though, since I was often puzzled at all of the other Radio Shacks that were still open. More surprising, was that when I went to go see a movie that week, this commercial ran in the theater beforehand. "Weird Al" Yankovic singing the joys of holiday shopping at Radio Shack, in a Radio Shack the likes of which I'd never seen - clean, modern, organized, inviting. I couldn't help but think, "Wow... Radio Shack can afford 'Weird Al'? How did that happen?" My guess is, the boardroom discussion went something like this: Suit #1: We need a new celebrity spokesperson. Suit #2: Howie Long and Teri Hatcher aren't hip with the kids anymore? Suit #3: They never were hip with the kids. Suit #1: We need someone who can better appeal to our target demographic. Suit #2: What's our target demographic? People who can't drive all the way to a Best Buy? Suit #3: People who have never heard of the internet? Suit #1: No - nerds! We need to re-connect with our core users. Hobbyists, electronics geeks, computer nerds. Suit #2: Sure! Nerds are rich now! That's exactly what we need! Suit #3: So we need a spokesperson that appeals to nerds? Suit #1: Yes! Nerds are hip and trendy right now. What with the internet and texting and MP3s and all that. Suit #2: And cellphones. Don't forget cellphones. Suit #3: I'd like to forget cellphones. I still have a hernia from the ones we used to sell. Suit #1: So who's big with the nerds now? And also affordable. Suit #2: We should get "Weird Al"! "Eat It" was awesome! And he had a #1 record this year. Suit #3: Isn't he kind of old? Do we really want to appeal to old nerds? Suit #1: Nah - kids love him! And their parents love him! It'll be great! Suit #2: Whole families of "Weird Al" fans, streaming into Radio Shack! Buying stuff! Suit #3: Yeah... I can see it now. "Hey kids... let's all go down to the Radio Shack to buy some cellphone chargers and hearing aid batteries." The thing that surprised me most about the commercial, is that I regularly follow "Weird Al" and I never once saw any announcement that he'd made this. And he puts links to almost everything he does on his website. Maybe he was distancing himself from it, sensing that the end was near for Radio Shack. Being associated with nerds is one thing... but even nerds no longer associate with Radio Shack. At any rate, the end finally came this week as Radio Shack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken so long. (Even though I could have predicted this would happen.) My most recent dealings with Radio Shack have been few and far-between, and usually the result of "Well, nothing else is open, and I don't want to wait the two days it would take to get this online, so I'll see if Radio Shack has it". And as time went on, more often than not, the answer was no - they didn't have it. Their inventory dwindled over the years, as did any concern any of their employees had for maintaining the stores. They fell into disrepair, with half-empty displays and shelves, and the things that used to distinguish them - the oddball adapters, electronic parts, components, project boxes, tools - disappeared. Even hobbyists who weren't already buying everything online were forced to shop elsewhere. The stores became ghost towns. Employees knew almost nothing about what the stores carried, and cared even less. On the rare occasion I could find something useful, I'd usually have to hit up three stores just to find enough stock of an item to make the project work. Radio Shack's downfall is hardly a recent event. About 20 years ago, around the time I started my current job, we would shop at Radio Shack for parts pretty frequently. But the thing was - even then - we were shopping just for parts. Odds and ends. RCA cables, audio adapters, switches, portable cassette players, 99¢ packages of resistors, VHS tape rewinders, cheap computer speakers - old technology we needed to support other old technology we still had at work. But over time, other stores began carrying those bits and pieces - Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's Electronics, computer stores, outlet stores - places where we were already buying other equipment, so that the odd trip out to Radio Shack became unnecessary. There were options. There was competition. Radio Shack was no longer unique. It was no longer a destination, but a fallback in case you couldn't find something somewhere else. And this was before the internet. The last major purchase we made from Radio Shack for work was about 10 years ago, when we bought several 27" TVs from them (because they were cheap). But all of the TVs failed within just a few years. You get what you pay for. As a hobbyist, I found fewer and fewer items at Radio Shack that I could use. Their electronic parts selection, which used to be massive, became effectively useless. I used to build stuff with parts from Radio Shack all the time. There was something reassuring about knowing that you could go down to the store whenever you wanted, to pick up a few parts to make something useful or just for fun. As a kid there was a joy to be found in looking through bins and drawers full of parts, to imagine the possibilities of what you could create. Wishing you had just a little more money to buy that cool looking switch, or that LED display, or any one of a hundred or a thousand other things. Radio Shack, even when I was a kid, had a reputation for selling cheap junk. Their batteries were cheap, and went flat faster than any other brand. They sold cheap speakers, car stereos, audio gear, microphones, and all sorts of things. I owned a cheap little mixer so that I could mix my own cassette tapes. My old car had an all Radio Shack stereo that I installed - an AM/FM cassette player, dual slim 7-band graphic equalizers (one for the front speakers, one for the rear), the front doors had 5 1/4" three-way speakers plus another 4" pair, the rear window had 6" x 9" three-ways, and the trunk contained a dual 8" subwoofer that I built using Radio Shack's book on how to build speaker enclosures - including hand-wound crossovers. My main home speakers are still sitting on Radio Shack speaker stands. Right now, where I work, hooked up to a brand new 46" HDTV, we still have an old cheap mini Radio Shack amplifier and Optimus AV speakers because they happen to work for exactly what we need. I still have four more of those speakers hooked up at home as my surround speakers. I still have an old pocket Radio Shack AM/FM radio that I keep around in case of emergencies. I have a Radio Shack stopwatch. I still have a bunch of old Radio Shack project boxes sitting around (some with projects in them). I still have a Radio Shack desoldering iron. Two of them, actually. One at home, one at work. I still have a couple of Radio Shack digital multimeters, and sound level meters (which we still regularly use at work). And a Radio Shack electronic studfinder. There are old Radio Shack cables, adapters, and who knows what else, tucked away all over the place. I probably still have a broken LCD watch pen sitting in a drawer. And yes... a lot of it, maybe most of it, is cheap junk. But maybe that's what made Radio Shack so... magical. We knew it was cheap - but it put things into our reach that maybe we otherwise wouldn't have been able to grab ahold of. My high school electronics teacher always dismissively called it "Battery Shack", but of course that's where you had to buy parts for his classes. It was where everyone went to buy parts to build things with. That's just what you did. It's where you went to find things to create stuff with. To explore. And Radio Shack carried all of the weird, oddball, and interesting electronics that other places never did. Need an adapter that turns your car's 8-track player into a cassette player? Yeah - Radio Shack's got you covered. Crappy handheld electronic games that were five years behind everyone else? Check. A cool-looking pocket TRS-80 computer with an LCD matrix screen? You got it. A battery-powered portable TV? How about five of 'em! Radio Shack had your back for the weird, fun, cool, goofy and stupid stuff you wanted, needed, or were just fascinated by. Was it innovation? I don't know. But it was fun. It was fun to walk through their stores, or flip through their catalogs, and just marvel at the weirdness, the coolness, the usefulness, and the uselessness of it all. Radio Shack used to call itself "The Technology Store". And it was. It wasn't always great technology, or quality technology, but it was undeniably fascinating and they put it within our reach. When Radio Shack really began to click with me, was when they began opening up their Computer Centers back in the TRS-80 days. I was incredibly fascinated with computers in the late 70's/early 80's, and Radio Shack set up these Computer Centers where you could go in and just bang away at the keyboards for hours. My friends and I would hang out there after school (when we weren't at the video arcades, naturally), learning BASIC, running programs, and printing things out on silver thermal paper. The store just let us in - a bunch of kids - to do that. To play - yes, but also to learn. I never learned how to program very much - but it was a great deal of fun. So much so, that I still vividly recall staying there so late one day, I missed a dentist's appointment, and got in a lot of trouble for it. I have yearbooks signed by my friends specifically mentioning our times at Radio Shack. Along with the arcade, the mall, and the movie theater... it was one of our hangouts. While in high school, one of my best friends saved up enough money for his own Trash-80. Besides playing blobby adaptations of arcade games, we spent hours - and I mean hours - upon hours playing Zork, logged into the University of Washington's VAX, or trolling various bulletin boards. I later typed up some of my college papers on his TRS-80, including one where the computer crashed, and he somehow managed to recover it from RAM (I have no idea to this day how he did that... but he now works at Microsoft, so there you go). Was it the best computer out there? Did it have the best graphics? Of course not. But it didn't matter. Because it was his. His computer. That was an incredibly rare thing back then for a high school kid. He worked hard to earn that money, too. And he chose to buy it at Radio Shack. The problem was that Radio Shack never figured out how to hang onto that magic. The magic of technology. Of weird, cool stuff. Of things that fired the imagination. They never figured out how to keep walking the line between being the place that sold cheap junk, but also being the place that always had cool cheap junk. After awhile, they just had junk. And that's all that people remembered. That and cellphones. Radio Shack was way ahead of the market on cellphones - but by the time the market caught up to them, they had already been left behind by it. They often led the way, but then got stuck in one place, never moving ahead until it was too late. Instead of being the place to go for the latest cool thing, they became the place where everything was just old. They had forgotten how to keep up. They'd lost their relevancy, but worse than that, they'd abandoned the niche that made them unique. That made them fun. Making fun of Radio Shack as a kid had always been with a wink and a nod. Now, people were making fun of them because they had become old and pathetic. Looking back - I wonder if they had kept a stronger emphasis on personal computers, maybe they could have done better. Build and sell cheap PC clones. Keep the Computer Centers for training. Focus on repair and service. Become the family-friendly source for personal computing. Be the Apple Store, for the non-Apple crowd. Maybe they could have survived long enough to partner with Microsoft to have stores-within-a-store as part of their recent "let's copy Apple" retail initiative. Radio Shack certainly had the real estate for it. I'm surprised Microsoft didn't have a hand in their buyout just for that reason alone. By its very nature, the computer industry is always going to have some cool thing people will want. 3D printing would have been right up the old Radio Shack's alley. Don't we still have a need for a "Technology Store"? Maybe they could have been the place to go to learn how to "cut the cable" featuring the latest DVRs, set-top boxes and digital antennae. Or they could have become a center for home automation integration - Home Depot sure isn't going to help you out with any of that. They completely, and repeatedly, missed every opportunity to get into video games. Quadcopters have become a "thing" recently - but by the time Radio Shack noticed, nobody was paying attention to them anymore. Nobody would risk buying anything there, because it was no longer a trusted source. Everyone knew Radio Shack had become just a joke. A joke with bad service, old products, and cheap junk. Not even a hint of the magic, or wonder, or fun, or goofiness remained. The opportunities were there. But they couldn't see them. Maybe they grew too big, too old, and too slow to change with the times. Maybe though, their downfall was inevitable. Maybe the age of the hobbyist, the tinkerer, the enthusiast, the discoverer, has moved on from needing a place to congregate. The internet has supplanted Radio Shack in every way, shape and form. You can browse an endless array of weird, cool and cheap junk online, and have it delivered to your door. You can connect with likeminded people without setting a foot outside of your house. Maybe even if Radio Shack had done everything right - the end result would have been the same. Maybe their time had just finally passed.

I recently added a Lynx to Artie the Atari. The reasons were twofold: I've had a Post-It note on my computer for well over a year that says, "Atari Lynx whose battery always dies by fourth panel". . I've had a list of Lynx games I've been meaning to buy from B&C Computervisions for even longer than that. Much, much longer. . I'm not a completist, by any stretch of the imagination, but there are some games I've always wanted to pick up for the system (I own a Lynx II). Nearly 22 years ago (hard to believe it's been that long), I bought my Lynx from a local video game store. They carried all of the latest systems (of the day) and also rented games. Since I was a broke college student, I tended to rent. I rarely bought games, except for a select handful: Block Out, Checkered Flag, Klax, Qix, RoadBlasters and Toki. Of the games I played back in the day, these were the ones I wanted to play the most, and all I could afford. They weren't cheap, either - I still have price stickers on several of them for $39.95. Ouch. But I did rent others, and borrowed some from a friend of mine who owned a first-gen Lynx. So I had a good idea of what was available, and what I liked. Some I probably rented enough times to afford to buy. But having $40 all at one time, and having $40 incrementally are two entirely different things when you're broke. Within a couple of years, the Lynx was relegated to the dustbin of videogame history. I was still broke though, and although I meant to pick up some more games, I never did. A few years later, the store went out of business. I didn't even notice, since I'd stopped going there. I knew there were no new games coming out for the Lynx, and I had no other current systems to buy games for. It was like the Atari 7800 all over again. Promising start, quick death, small game library. Had I known they were going under, maybe I would've tried to pick up some games before they closed. The sad truth is, I don't even recall the name of the store anymore. Some years later, I found B&C's Lynx game list, and from that, made a list of "must-buy-these-someday" games. But I never bought them. Some were still too expensive, and after playing some of them in Handy, I came to realize I needed to trim down my list some more. A couple years ago (okay, I just looked, and it was actually 2008!), the AtariAge store had a good-sized stock of dirt-cheap Lynx games, and Albert hooked me up with Chip's Challenge, Crystal Mines II, Kung Food, Steel Talons, Tournament Cyberball and Xybots, effectively doubling my Lynx's library. However, none of those games were what I'd classify as a "must buy" (which is probably why they were dirt cheap in the first place). Xybots, Crystal Mines II and Chip's Challenge were good games, but the rest... shelf filler. My comment to him regarding Kung Food at the time was, "This belongs in the landfill under E.T." But this past week, as I was finally adding a Lynx to Artie the Atari, I decided, "Hey... I'm not broke at the moment. I've got some empty shelf space in my Lynx section. Why not dig out that list again, and go for it?" So I did. I whittled my list down to seven keepers, five of which only cost $10 each. All new-in-box, still factory shrink-wrapped. And Thursday afternoon - they showed up, along with a couple of vintage Lynx catalogs as a nice bonus (or as packing material... but either way, it was a nice surprise): Six of the games came in an original Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure shipping box. It was good way to protect them, and also a neat artifact from the era: So with that, I dug out my AC adapter (despite what I might have written elsewhere), opened the shrink-wrap (ruining their value for all eternity) and fired them up. Here's a rundown of the games: Awesome Golf - I rented this quite a lot back-in-the-day, but it was always one of the more expensive games (and still was, from this batch) so I hadn't bought it. But it's a really good golf game - three 18 hole courses, good controls, nice scaling effects, and a decent number of options. That said, the sound effects leave something to be desired. An annoying gopher with an irritating voice will comment on your shots, and the distinctive sound a ball should make when hitting the bottom of the cup is poorly done and rather unsatisfying. But those are minor complaints. Awesome? Perhaps not. But "Very Good Golf" probably didn't have the marketing potential they were looking for. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure - An RPG based on characters from the best time-travel movie of all time (and yes, I can back that statement up). Typically, you walk around looking for objects and solving puzzles, but where this adds a unique twist is that you have to travel through time as well. So you may have to pick up an object in the future, travel back in time to leave it somewhere, then travel back to another point in the future so the object is waiting there when you need it. Clever stuff. Hydra - A port of an obscure arcade game, it's basically RoadBlasters on water. And like RoadBlasters on the Lynx, the lack of analog controls causes the game to suffer. You can't precisely steer or aim. The graphics are good, and there is an added element in that you can periodically fly to avoid obstacles and capture objects. But besides the lack of analog control, I'm also not fond of the inverted joypad layout (press down to accelerate, up to decelerate) because it really gets uncomfortable after awhile on the Lynx's joypad. An option to flip it would have been most welcomed. Paperboy - This surprised me a lot. I liked the original arcade Paperboy game, but it never worked well in emulation because of the arcade game's unique handlebar controller. Somehow though, they made it work on the Lynx. Part of this has to do with the fact that you're always (and only) aiming straight to your left. All you really have to do is steer and control your speed, and, unlike Hydra, they figured out how to dial in the controls just right. An excellent port. Rampart - I never played the original arcade game. In fact, I never knew the game existed prior to the Lynx, but this became one of my favorite Lynx titles. It's incredibly well-suited to being a portable game, and would make a great iPhone game (along with Quantum). You build up walls around your castle using Tetris-like pieces, place your cannons, then defend your territory in a brief battle sequence. Between battles you repair your castle, but it's not as easy as it sounds. You can't build over debris, and you aren't always given pieces that fit where you need them. It's a combat, strategy and puzzle game all in one, and a bargain at $10 for one of the Lynx's best games. S.T.U.N. Runner - Another surprising arcade port. Atari attempted to port Hard Drivin' to the Lynx with catastrophically bad results. It looked terrible, the controls were bad, and the frame rate was unbearably slow. So I expected S.T.U.N. Runner to be just as bad, if not worse. But they cranked out a great version of a very advanced arcade game for its day. The controls, graphics, gameplay - everything works, and really shows off the Lynx's power. There's a nice depth to the gameplay, and the difficultly ramps up very well, adding new elements as you progress through the levels. Well worth having. Zarlor Mercenary - It's a vertical shoot-'em up. A bit overpriced relative to the other games, but still good fun. There's a good variety of enemies and power-ups, although my gripe with games of this genre is that they throw more enemies at you than you could ever possibly shoot. They expect you to die repeatedly, or pick up ridiculous power-ups to wipe out the enemies en masse. While it looks impressive with all of those explosions going off everywhere, it makes me wish Xevious (which required more skill than firepower) had been ported to the Lynx instead. So there you are - my Lynx has some new life breathed into it again. And even after all that... I still have enough room on my shelf for two more games.

As I'd pointed out in the comments of this blog entry (it'd be really nice if there were a way to link directly to a particular comment... ), the once-great Starcade video arcade at Disneyland had become a sad shadow of its former self. Back in the early 80's, it was an amazing arcade, jammed full of video games, spanning two floors. When Disney released Tron: Legacy, they opened up Flynn's Arcade as part of ElecTRONica in California Adventure. I never managed to get over and see it though, since the one time I was there while it was still in place, that park had already closed for the day (at 9PM, which seems ridiculous). Flynn's got shut down a few weeks later, and arcades were once again dead at Disneyland. Then I'd heard that with the release of Wreck-It Ralph, they'd put a couple of Fix-It Felix, Jr. arcade games in at Starcade, back in the main park. Since I was going to be there last week, I thought I should check it out. I didn't know if the Fix-It Felix, Jr.'s were still there, or if any games were left at all. I had already played the Fix-It Felix, Jr. arcade game at a Disney event, but playing classic video games, even fake ones, is never a bad thing. So even if that one game was all that was there, it was worth stopping by. Imagine then, my surprise... From left, near the Space Mountain entrance: Arkanoid, token machine, Yie-Ar Kung-Fu, Track and Field (obscured), Centipede, Dig-Dug, Joust. The classics were back! And not one or two machines, but nearly two-dozen of them. And while hardly a return to the arcade's glory days, there were more than I'd ever expected, and all (mostly) in good working condition. Best of all - they were actually being played! It was difficult to take clear pictures of everything because there were usually people in front of the machines. Kids, adults, adolescents... and not even playing them ironically either. But enjoying them! Timeless classics, indeed. The token machine near the Space Mountain entrance was even typically fussy about taking dollar bills. I saw more than a few people having to "iron" out their money by pulling it across the edge of the machine to get it to work. While probably not intentional on Disney's part, glitchy token machines are as much a part of the arcade experience as the games themselves. I was disappointed though to see that the tokens were just generic designs, and nothing unique to Disneyland, Wreck-It Ralph or Starcade. C'mon Disney, they don't cost that much! Now certainly, these aren't the money-makers they once were, but neither were they abandoned, derelict, lonely games sitting forgotten in a corner somewhere. People were enjoying them. It was hard to get any time on Fix-It Felix Jr., despite there being four of them in the arcade. From left, two Fix-It Felix, Jr.'s, R-Type, Donkey Kong Junior, two more Fix-It Felix, Jr.'s. My heart just about skipped a beat (could be the cholesterol build-up) when I saw my all-time favorite arcade game there as well: Battlezone! It was more than I would've hoped for. It seemed they tried to have at least some of the games shown in Litwak's arcade from Wreck-It Ralph. Curiously though, no Q*bert. Guess he's still unemployed. Cylone and Tron: Legacy pinball machines, Missile Command (obscured), Asteroids, Battlezone. Galaxian, Space Invaders, Stargate, another token machine. Galaga, Road Blasters, Super Cobra, Scramble, Tron. In the far distance: the games near the Space Mountain entrance. Most of the games were in good working condition. Some of the monitors were faded (particularly Scramble) and dip switch settings were all over the place - Asteroids was apparently set on "impossible" since I've never seen space rocks move that fast, and Battlezone was set to not give any extra lives, plus its joysticks were shot - they wouldn't return to center, making the game tough to play. Still, I probably blew five bucks in tokens there, in an hour or so. Could've been longer - I honestly lost track of time. I embarrassed myself on Arkanoid (paddle controller had too much play in it - might be worn gears), I had lost pretty-much all of my skill on Joust (but managed to get on the high score list anyway), had a disastrous outing on Stargate (nothing new there - never could play that nearly as well as Defender), did okay on Tron (almost got through the third level, which is about as far as I could remember the patterns), nearly got to the base on Scramble, and had a catastrophically bad game on Super Cobra. Fix-It Felix, Jr. was set on free play, and I managed to get in a few games. It plays considerably different from the iOS version - I didn't capture any video of it (it's hard to play and shoot with your cell phone at the same time), but in short it's much, much harder. Ralph's bricks cover several rows of windows as they fall, making them very hard to dodge, and requiring a completely different approach to the game. On the other hand, when Felix fixes a window with broken top and bottom panes, you only have to hit "fix" once to fix the whole window (in the other versions, each pane must be fixed). I never got past the first screen, in part because of an intermittent joystick problem on the machine I was on. But a poor dancer blames the floor and all that, so no excuses. Panorama shot of the arcade. The row with Galaga, Tron etc., is to the left, in the center of the room. Arkanoid, Dig Dug, etc., are in the far distance. Fix-It Felix, Jr. machines are near the middle of the picture, then the pinballs, Missile Command, Asteroids and Battlezone are to the right. (click to enlarge) Continuing from the previous section, to the far right you can see Galaxian, Space Invaders and Stargate near the Star Tours gift shop. Turning another 90° you'd start over again with Galaga. (click to enlarge) Even though Battlezone was fairly trashed, I was determined to play it and beat 100,000 points. On my sixth game, I'd finally adapted to the wonky controls enough to clear that score, and then some. Not bad for busted joysticks, a twitchy monitor and no extra lives. It's great to see some of the classics back at Disneyland. They just belong there. They should be a permanent fixture. They just need a little more fixing up and tweaking to make them so people can play them without getting frustrated. Hopefully they won't remove them again. They certainly have enough space there left for selling t-shirts and merchandise so it wouldn't hurt anything to leave them. And people enjoyed playing them. I certainly did. It was the closest I've been to some of those machines in many, many years, and I'd go back to Disneyland just to spend time in the arcade playing them. If, of course, I knew they were still there and in good working condition. Mainly because I got into the park for free. But still, the tokens cost money.

So, I finally bought a PlayStation 3. I had planned to do so a year ago on Black Friday, but just didn't want to deal with the insanity of fighting people at stores for one, and all of the online deals sold out before I could get to them. This year though... I had a plan! I was going to camp out on Amazon, and snag one in a Lightning Deal™. I knew when their PS3 bundle was going on sale - all I had to do was just log on a little early, refresh the page until the deal showed up, and bam! Deal done. Yeah... so that didn't work out. They sold out faster than I could refresh the page. But I had a back-up plan. Y'see I was determined to get a PS3 for no more than $199, because that's what Sony should have been selling them for anyway. That meant hitting up a store. Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Toys 'R' Us and probably others were all selling the same $199 bundle. All I had to do was find one. Now, I could've gone to the stores late Thanksgiving night, or stupid-early the next morning, but I refuse to play the bait-and-switch game. Either they had enough stock to last the weekend (which is what their sales theoretically run) or they didn't get my money. I was either going to get a PS3 on my terms, or just skip it until the next sale. So when I got home from visiting relatives on Friday afternoon, I planned out my route. Best Buy first (it's closest), then Target, then Toys 'R' Us, and finally, if those didn't play out, the three (yes... three) local Wal-Marts as a last result. I hate shopping at Wal-Mart, since my soul dies a little each time I do. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. I was hoping that by the time I went out, the crazy shoppers would've finished up/been arrested, and most everyone else would be getting tired and heading off to dinner. So, off to Best Buy I went. And that's as far as I got. First, parking was a breeze. Black Friday shopping hint #1: Park near the stores nobody wants to shop at. In this case, Office Depot. A Sears will also work. Then just walk. There was no heavy traffic around the strip mall, and I found a parking spot up the second aisle I turned into. So far, so good. Then I walked into the store. Busy, but not insane. No crazy people fighting. Walked over to the video game section. There were a ton of PS3s there. But they were the not-on-sale $299 500 GB version. Not what I wanted. Checked the next aisle over. Some other models, priced at $269, including some of the leftover 160 GB models from the previous generation. Not looking so good now. Then, I turned around... and in the middle of the floor: Ka-ching! More than 20 of 'em left! I don't know how tall the stack was earlier in the day, but I only needed one (a couple of other people snagged one while I was there, so I would guess they were selling pretty well). I also picked up the PS3 Blu-ray remote while I was there - after price-checking it against Amazon, naturally. Surprise! Best Buy was the same price. I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. Black Friday shopping hint #2: Shop for obsolete technology. It felt a little bit like buying a Dreamcast on closeout after Sega announced they had killed the console, but they were sure easy to find. The checkout line took just a couple of minutes, and I was back home in under an hour. Black Friday shopping hint #3: Shop late in the day, after all of the crazy people are gone. Sure, you limit your options, but deals can still be found, and your stress level will be a lot lower. The odds are you're going to miss out on "doorbusters" anyway, so just plan around it, and don't let your world come to an end if you can't find the deals you want. And that is how you go shopping on Black Friday. So I brought my first new console in years home, eager to fire it up. And now, the obligatory unboxing shots: The bundle comes with a couple of games: Infamous and Uncharted, and their sequels. Never heard of 'em. Suppose I should look 'em up to see if they're any good. And inside the box... another box! Actually, this is a pretty smart idea on Sony's part. Just put a thin cardboard sleeve over the standard box, and you can quickly and cheaply re-bundle the console. You know... I don't feel like taking pictures of removing every single thing from the box. So let's cut to the chase: Console, controller, bundled games and some cables. And no, there's no HDMI cable with it. But really... anybody still whining about that has obviously never found Monoprice. And no, the center channel speaker didn't come with it. The games are just in cardboard sleeves - no cases. The console is considerably smaller than I expected. How small? Well, while every other website in the world has taken comparison pics next to other PS3s or XBoxes or whatever, that's all pretty irrelevant here. So here are the comparison shots that actually matter: Sorry I didn't have a Heavy Sixer, but you get the idea. It's smaller than a 2600, but bigger than a 2600 Jr. Now then, I already had two games for it: ModNation Racers and Split/Second, so I was eager to fire them up and see how they were. But things have changed a lot since the last time I bought a console. First... the console had to update itself. So that took awhile. Then I dropped in ModNation Racers. And it had to update itself. That took over a half-an-hour. But finally, I was able to play the game. And... it's a kart racer*. But where it's made its name is in the customization options. You can build karts, characters, and even tracks, then share them and download new ones. I haven't spent much time with it, but it looks like it's going to be a pretty major time-suck. However a lot of the game is built around online racing, and I suspect that since I'm probably the last person to have ever bought this game, most of the online racing is over and done with. Besides, I still have to sign up for PSN or whatever it is. Next, I fired up Split/Second. This only took about 15 minutes to update. Now this is more my type of game. Very much in the Burnout style of racing game. Very arcade-like, with lots of crashing and destruction. The idea is, as you're racing around you can trigger events on the track that can take out opponents - from exploding oil drums to cranes swinging around to trash trucks backing up to demolishing entire buildings. It's terrific fun! You can even destroy enough objects that the course of the race will actually be altered while you're playing. So I'm going to have a lot of fun working my way through this one. My "must-have" list for other games includes: Gran Turismo 5, Dirt 3, Burnout: Paradise, Tron: Evolution (yes... I know it's supposedly not very good, but hey - it's Tron!), and possibly Need For Speed: Most Wanted. Sense a pattern here? Yeah... I bought the PS3 for racing games. But if there are any other "must-haves" out there, let me know. Especially if they're in the bargain bin. Oh, and the Blu-ray remote was totally worth it. While I already had a Sony Blu-ray player, the PS3 will now replace it. It has an excellent picture (I re-watched Tron last night on Blu-ray which looked fantastic), has options that my dedicated player didn't, loads discs a little faster, and while not whisper-quiet, it's quiet enough that I don't hear it during movies. Plus, Sony does a good job of regularly updating their PS3s with firmware updates. One gripe - the remote isn't backlit. But if I ever set up a proper home theater, I'll buy an Oppo. * Seems to me there's a good idea in there somewhere for a "cart" racer game for the 2600.

No doubt thanks to all of the hard work he puts into AtariAge, and his upcoming attendance at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, he is this week's App of the week! Download him now, while he's still free!

Sony finally announced the new, long rumored, slimmer, cheaper, PS3. Uh... wait a sec. Cheaper isn't the right word... what's the word I'm looking for? Oh right... pricier. The base PS3 now costs $269, instead of $249. I suspect most people were expecting $199. I certainly was. After all, they did away with the slot-loading Blu-ray drive, for a (presumably) cheaper top-loader. Generally the reason products like this are re-engineered, are to make them more cost-effective to produce, and therefore cheaper to sell to consumers while maintaining or improving profitability. Note that I said re-engineered. Not upgraded. Upgrading implies improved performance. New features. More speed. Better graphics. Moving from a PS3 to a PS4, for example. Usually with technology, you get either: Improvements to the technology at a similar cost, or... Similar or equivalent technology at a lower cost But not if you're Sony. Sony repackaged the PS3, undoubtably reducing their costs, while increasing the price. This is going to draw in new owners how exactly? Now, sure you can say, "Well - it comes with a free game and some DLC for some other game. So that's like getting a bunch of money off the price." But DLC doesn't cost Sony anything to include, and the cost of a game on a Blu-ray disc is negligible (even so, Uncharted 3 is only retailing for $20). Sure, you're saving money by not buying the game separately - assuming you want it - but it's only costing Sony pennies to include it. If you don't want the game, you don't have the option to not get it at a lower cost, or get an alternate game you do want. It's false, perceived value. Like including Pac-Man with the 2600. Also, Sony already includes bundled games with the current $249 PS3. In fact, last year during Black Friday, they were selling a bundle with two games and a console for $199 (guess I should've braved the crowds for that one). So why the price increase? It could also be argued, "But now the PS3 comes with a 250 GB drive in the base model - the old one was only 160 GB." Yes, but that drive was introduced in July, 2010. Hard drives have universally increased in capacity and decreased in price since then (here's a cool chart that I wish someone would update). In fact, some 160 GB hard drives now cost more than 250 GB (or larger) drives because smaller capacity drives are discontinued as higher capacity ones become cheaper. So it's not the free game or bigger storage. Why else would Sony increase the price? Oh right... because they're stupid. I keep forgetting that.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently rented Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview from iTunes. Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmguwF7ruoM I'll admit to having a fascination with the history of computers, for a couple of reasons. First of all, my dad worked as a computer programmer, so even from the earliest days I was at least peripherally aware of things like punch cards and ASCII printouts on continuous feed paper (someone at his work would print out Peanuts calendars in ASCII each year, and I'd get one). Secondly, I grew up at just the right time where personal computers (and especially videogames) came into existence and became consumer products. I always had a fascination with them, and although I never learned to program, I always managed to find someone to use them. In most cases, it was to draw with - programming graphics into a TRS-80 or Apple II using BASIC commands. This was years before the Macintosh. But it was the closest I could get to creating videogames - by re-creating the graphics of my favorite games (or occasionally, of games I wanted to make myself). Early in college, I began to write term papers using a friend's TRS-80 - my first experience with word processing, and also catastrophic data loss. The TRS-80 barfed up the paper I'd written, yet somehow, my friend managed to recover it. Still not sure how exactly. Seems to me he managed to recover it from RAM, but this was nearly 30 years ago now, so my memory (pun not intended) is a bit fuzzy. Back then, I didn't really know much about how computers worked. I just knew they were cool, and I wanted to use them. I began using Macs in 1988 and got quite good at it. It helped me land my first job as a professional artist, in fact. I'd been fascinated with Macs since first seeing one in 1984, since that was the first computer that I felt had been made for me. It had the user in mind - not the hobbyist, programmer, business person, etc. I could pick up the mouse, and just draw with it. It was pretty awesome, and incredibly revolutionary. So when I began using them in earnest, I became a Mac loyalist, and began following what the company was doing. Where it had been, what it was working on, etc. In 1995, Bob Cringely created the documentary Triumph of the Nerds (based on his book Accidental Empires), which outlined the history of the personal computer. Since I had grown up in parallel with that history, it was riveting. All of the things I had seen happen on the surface had an amazing, rich, bizarre, and at times unbelievable history behind them. This is the documentary from which Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview comes from, and it's well-worth watching. The Lost Interview takes place about 10 years after he left Apple, and about a year before returning to it. At the time of the interview, he was far removed from Apple, and Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. What makes this interview so fascinating, is listening to his thoughts on what makes successful products and businesses, his heartbrokenness over what Apple had become, where the industry should go, and knowing that at that time, he had no idea he'd be returning to helm Apple. In hindsight, seeing how that all played out in Apple's resurgence, making it one of the biggest success stories in the entire world, is incredibly compelling. So if you're fascinated by the history of computers, as I am, I'd recommend that you rent the interview from iTunes. Maybe it'll show up on Netflix someday, or online, but for now, it's still not a bad deal for $3.99. Meanwhile, I'd also highly recommend watching Triumph of the Nerds, if you haven't already seen it. While a bit dated now, the history of how the personal computer industry, Apple, the PC and Microsoft came into existence is really worthwhile, and it's always interesting to see how predictions of that time either came true, or failed miserably. It's available on VHS and DVD (both of which I have), and online: Triumph of the Nerds - pt. 1: Impressing Their Friends http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFL9IyJ_qHk Triumph of the Nerds - pt. 2: Riding The Bear http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRmaIzGTOM Triumph of the Nerds - pt. 3: Great Artists Steal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1Bg461mnN8 Another excellent documentary is The Machine That Changed the World. Older than Triumph by several years, it's even more dated, but again - the history is what this is about, not what was current at the time it was produced (1992). In this case, it documents the entire history of computers, not just the personal computer. It's incredible to see how far we've come in such a short time. And again, even though it's now 20 years old, it's interesting to see what they thought the future might bring, and what state-of-the-art was back then (and yes... I still remember just how impressive that state-of-the-art was). The Machine That Changed the World - pt. 1: Giant Brains http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcR74y61xZk The Machine That Changed the World - pt. 2: Inventing The Future http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APZ5-cjWfw The Machine that Changed the World - pt.3: The Paperback Computer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwC3gOudlAc The Machine that Changed the World - pt. 4: The Thinking Machine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gzpd0irP58 The Machine that Changed the World - pt. 5: The World at Your Fingertips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_3A2jSnvHE There was also a sequel to Triumph of the Nerds - Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet - documenting the rise of the internet. While I don't find it quite as compelling, it is interesting to see the likes of Amazon during their infancy. All I really remember is that it all happened so fast. The blog software (grumble) won't let me post all of the videos here, but here are the links (also available on VHS): Nerds 2.0.1: Networking the Nerds Nerds 2.0.1: Serving the suits Nerds 2.0.1: Wiring the world

This is a pretty cool blog entry. Alan Kay and Bob Stein were working for Atari back in '82, and were asked to come up with some concepts for an "Intelligent Encyclopedia". They hired recent-ex-Disney artist Glenn Keane to illustrate them, and what they came up with was, well, basically what we're doing with iPads, the internet, and all that sort of stuff now.

So... if you had a bunch of money, how cool would it be to gather up a bunch of the best programmers from the classic arcade era, and hire them to make new games? You know... like Ed Rotberg (Battlezone), Owen Rubin (Major Havoc, Space Duel), Rich Adam (Gravitar, Missile Command), Ed Logg (Asteroids, Centipede), Tim Skelly (Rip-Off, Armor Attack, Reactor), Bruce Merrit (Black Widow) and Dennis Koble (Atlantis, Solar Storm)? Well, some guy just did that. Seamus Blackley, one of the co-creators of something called the X-Box (I never was much up on them new-fangled consoles like the Nintendo and ColecoVision), got the band back together to create new games for mobile devices. iPhones, iPads and the like. You can read the whole story at VentureBeat.com. Blackley teamed up with Van Burham (gamer chick and author of one of the most disappointing books on classic videogames ever) to found Innovative Leisure - a company that apparently is striving to be the spiritual successor to the original Atari. Hopefully they won't end up being the literal successor to the original Atari. They've already got 7 games in development, and THQ is on board as a publisher (fortunately, if/when THQ goes under, Innovative Leisure can take their games elsewhere). I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with. Could this be the start of a new renaissance in classic gaming?

Buried somewhere in this blog, I've been keeping a running list of apps I've gotten for my iPhone. (I suppose if tags were actually working in the blogs, I could tag the entry with something useful so people could actually find it. ) One app I won't be getting is the recently released Namco Arcade. Even though it's free. Of course, it's not really free. If you want to play the games, you have to pay for them. Now, this should come as no surprise, since Atari does the same thing. Their app is free, the games cost 99¢ per pack. You buy them, you own them. Play them anytime you want. This is pretty-much the way apps of this sort should work. But that's not how Namco did it. Namco took the "Arcade" part of its title too literally. To play these particular games - you have to pay per play. 'Scuse me? You read that right. You have to buy "Play Coins" in packs to play the games. Otherwise, you get one free play, each day. Run out of "Coins"? You can't play anymore until you buy more. And your "Free Play" is used up before you dip into your "Coins", too. Can't you just buy the games? Like you can with other arcade games by Namco? Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Rally-X, Galaga, Dig-Dug, Pole Position, Mappy? Nope. We've reverted back to the days of quarter-eaters. Insert coin to play. On your phone. And the games? Xevious, Tower of Druaga, Motos and Phozon. Of the bunch, only Xevious is worth squat. In fact, I'd never even heard of the other three until MAME came along. (But they promise more are on the way.) Ridiculous. This is so greedy and stupid, I'm beyond being insulted by it. I'm actually offended. Fortunately, it won't run on my iPhone 3GS. Can't say I'm going to lose any sleep over it. Here's hoping Apple puts a stop to this sort of thing.

How about, "Buyers' Remorse Day"? This would follow Black Friday, where people would look back at a day wasted chasing bargains at stores, having spent more than they ever intended to (or having not found anything they wanted), and realize they could have just bought everything online instead. To wit, the Playstation 3 Bundle. Wal-Mart (plus Target, Sears and possibly others) is offering up a PS3 bundle. This includes a PS3, Ratchet and Clank All 4 One, and Little Big Planet 2, all for $199. Even without those games (which I wouldn't have bought anyway, but there's always eBay), that's $50 off, and enough incentive to finally buy a PS3. However, I loathe the very thought of going shopping on Black Friday. Even more, I loathe the thought of setting foot into a Wal-Mart. So the thought of doing both is simply out-of-the-question. Stores will sell out of it within minutes of opening, people will trample each other in a stampede of greed and man's inhumanity to man, and the whole thing would just be an exercise in futility and frustration, leaving me a broken, angered, shell of a human being lying in heap of exhaustion. But oh, hey... Wal-Mart will have the very same deal available online. So can anyone explain to me... why on Earth would I ever get up at the crack of dawn on Friday (or worse still, waste part of my Thanksgiving going the night before), to fight the crowds on the off-chance I might happen to be in time to get some bait-and-switch deal to save me a few bucks, when I can do just as well, and without the headaches, online? Are people insane? Hence, the need for "Buyers' Remorse Day". Oops - looks like somebody beat me to it. There's already a day for that. But the name I came up with is catchier.

Remember the movie, "The Last Starfighter"? It's mostly notable for two things: being an early attempt at sort-of realistic CGI special effects, and being about video games. Otherwise, it's completely forgettable b-movie science fiction. The premise was that there was an arcade game called "The Last Starfighter" which turned out to be a recruiting tool for actual starfighters. The game was a test of skill, and if you were good enough, an alien would come to earth, and haul you off to do battle against evil aliens in some distant part of the galaxy. So now, there's a TV show about it. Sort of. Nissan GT Academy (on the Speed channel) takes 16 gamers who have competed in Gran Turismo tournaments, and pits them against each other in real cars, for a chance to join the Nissan racing team as a professional driver. It's basically an hour-long advertisement for Gran Turismo, Sony and Nissan. But it's still interesting to watch. There's a bunch of scrawny pimply-faced gaming nerds, some out-of-shape middle-aged guys, and a few guys who actually look like they know what they're doing behind the wheel of a real car (one guy being an experienced cart racer). They put them through professional driver training (which by itself would make being in the competition worthwhile), and then through a series of competitions, testing those abilities as well as their physical conditioning and stamina. Read that last part again... "physical conditioning and stamina". Gamers. Yeah. Surprise! Professional drivers have to be in good physical shape. They weren't expecting that. Anyway, if you get the Speed channel, check it out. It airs Tuesdays.

I just got back from a nice, long vacation in Seattle. I never took a vacation last summer (it was insanely hectic at work), so it was nice to catch up on rest and relaxation for a few weeks. It was also a good opportunity to recharge my creative batteries, which frankly, had pretty-much run dry. I've got several homebrew projects I should be working on (labels and graphics), so I'm hoping now to be able to get back to them in all earnestness, and with renewed vigor. Just as soon as the post-vacation depression lifts, that is. Because man - is it ever a drag being back. Seriously, with vacation scenery like this... can you blame me? (Taken from the Ocean Crest resort, Moclips, WA) Yeah... that's what I'm talking about... Sorry. Lost in thought there for a moment. Besides relaxing and visiting with friends and family, vacations are always an opportunity to discover weird and cool stuff I overlook during my normal rut routine. To wit, these cool little Pac-Man candies, which I had no idea existed: They come in nice little tins, and given the theme of Pac-Man, make a perfect tie-in to the brand. Plus, the tins are nicely designed - they keep the retro look of the original sprites, without any cartoony embellishments. I suppose you could even role-play with them as toys if you wanted to. But that would be weird. I just have them on a shelf. Too bad they didn't have all of the ghosts in different colored tins (maybe different flavors), but it's still a pretty cool idea, and something I was very surprised to find, in a world where this is all-too-often the sort of thing you see on store shelves: And no, I didn't buy those. I have some standards.

If you didn't grow up during the 70's, it's hard to relate just how cool it was the first time I saw a digital watch. Not the kind we have now and are so commonplace they're given away in cereal boxes and gumball machines, but the red LED ones that cost a fortune and drained batteries so fast you had to press a button to turn on the display. They were undeniably the coolest thing in town. That, and pocket calculators. There was just something magical about those glowing red digits. After a little while, the price came down, and I got a black plastic Texas Instruments red LED watch of my own. It eventually fell apart (hey... I was a kid and the whole G-Shock concept hadn't come along yet), although I still wish I had it... just for the sheer geekiness of it. I still remember the big technological advancement that happened when someone invented a watch where you could tilt your wrist to turn on the display, so you didn't have to press a button to tell the time. Ahh... memories. But in 1976, the whole LED phenomenon jumped to a whole new level - electronic games. I don't recall exactly where I first saw Mattel Electronics' Auto Race, but it was likely at school (junior high school, to be exact). I'm sure somebody there had one. I remember going over to someone's house and playing it, and probably at school as well, although when Mattel Electronics' Football came out, that became the "must-have" game, completely eclipsing Auto Race. I probably also played it at Sears, or some other store that carried all of those shiny new-fangled handheld electronic games. But wherever I played it, I do remember that I wanted one. But I never got one. Probably too expensive. All of my money went into Cracked magazines and Pop-Rocks at the 7-11. Eventually, a few years later, I did get a couple of handheld LED games, as Christmas or birthday presents. A Sears Electronic Touchdown (a re-branded Coleco Electronic Quarterback), and an Entex Space Invader. (I'm not sure how I ended up getting the football game, since I don't recall asking for it. My guess is my parents asked someone at Sears about which game to get, and that's what was recommended. Good call. It's an excellent game.) I put in a lot of hours playing them, too. You can tell when a handheld is well-used, because the instruction stickers on the back are worn out. I distinctly remember sitting and listening to Dr. Demento on headphones for hours while playing Space Invader. Good times. Also, both games made an appearance in the movie Tron. There's a scene where Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is in his office at the arcade, and picks up a handheld game and plays it briefly. The game he picked up was a Coleco Electronic Quarterback, but the sounds were from an Entex Space Invader! Cool, huh? By the time I could afford to buy Auto Race, it was probably already gone from the store shelves. Either that, or so many other games had eclipsed it in terms of complexity and quality (VFD games like Cosmic Combat - which I also coveted, or Coleco's Pac-Man, or LCD games like Nintendo's Game & Watch series or Nelsonic's literal game & watch), that it just didn't seem like a good game to spend my money on anymore. Well that, and I also bought an Atari 2600 in 1981, so most of my spending money went into buying games for that. At least, whatever didn't go into the arcades. But I never forgot about Auto Race, and from time to time, wondered about buying one. In recent years, I tentatively planned to pick one up at a game expo. However, I still haven't managed to attend one. Probably should someday. Whenever I checked eBay, they seemed few and far-between, or were only available as overpriced CIB versions (and I really couldn't care less about having a box). That changed recently, when several of them all showed up on eBay at the same time. One was CIB (which I bid on because it was cheap at the time, but lost because it wasn't cheap enough), and three others which were loose. Two were near-mint, and the last one was... well, the owner had apparently played it a lot. I bid on the first of the nice ones, figuring that since the CIB one had just sold for $36, I should be able to pick up one of the loose ones for considerably less. If I lost out on the first one, I'd have a good chance on the second. But I didn't need the second chance, since I snagged the first one for $15, which for me, was a bargain (I figured anything under $20 was more than fair, after waiting 35 years ). And within a couple of days, behold! The glowing, flickery, goodness of Auto Race was mine at last! The game works perfectly, too. Switches are solid, everything is pretty clean, the stickers are all intact. In fact, it makes me wonder how much this got played back-in-the-day. After all... just look at the back of it: The instructions sticker is perfectly intact. No wear. Hardly even a scratch. On my football game, the sticker is trashed. The Space Invader one is completely unreadable. As for Auto Race's gameplay, all I remembered was that you moved a blip (your car) left and right, and avoided other blips (cars). Presumably, the more cars you passed, the higher score you got. Wrong! As you can (probably) read in the photo above, the goal is to complete four laps in the fastest time. You have to start out in first gear, and as you shift up, you go faster. Or rather, the opponent cars come at you faster. So then... how do you complete a lap? Here's the part I completely forgot about - your car moves up towards the top of the display. If you hit a car, you crash and are sent backwards, losing precious time. I don't know if any arcade games (electro-mechanical or video) at that time (1976) did this, but others (most notably Turbo) would adopt the same risk vs. reward play mechanic later on. You have 99 seconds to complete the game, so that's the worst score you can get. The sounds are grating, and there's no volume control for it (or an earphone jack - which is probably a merciful thing). There is a jack for an AC adapter though, so you don't have to eat through an endless supply of 9 volt batteries. I have no idea how long one will last in it. (As an aside... I don't know if AA batteries have gotten longer, or if my Space Invader game has shrunk , but I had a hard time fitting all six AAs in there. I had to practically force the batteries to fit - almost to the point of not wanting to risk breaking it - and that never happened before. Maybe Heavy Duty batteries would fit better than Alkaline ones. I also need to open it up to do some repairs, since the power switch is very intermittent, and causes the game to frequently cut out. Probably a bad solder joint. But I digress...) It still amazes me how playable such incredibly simple games still are. There's no animation to speak of (just persistence of vision), and graphics? Well, the entire display (except for the score) consists of just 3 x 7 red dashes. Fewer "pixels" than even a simple, single sprite would have. (And if you want to re-live playing an LED game on your 2600, I'd highly recommend BLiP Football.) Anyway, after waiting to own Auto Race for so long, was it worth it? Well, for fifteen bucks - yes. It's a fun little game (smaller than I recall), and a nice occasional diversion. It's not something I'd obsess over - endlessly trying to shave another few seconds off my best time, and certainly the reality of the what the game is couldn't live up to the feelings of nostalgia that the memories of having wanted it conjured up, but it's still fun to have, and the shelf that it sits on - next to Electronic Touchdown and Space Invader - seems somehow more complete now. Except maybe for that Cosmic Combat game... Next time... we skip ahead a few years.

Well, despite my hesitancy to be an early adopter, I did go out and buy Tron: Evolution for the PSP. It was an impulse buy, and I feel terribly guilty about it. Mainly because I bought it at Wal-Mart. It's not the same Tron: Evolution that's on the PS3 or XBox360, but rather a collection of mini-games. Most are similar to the games on the Tron: Legacy iPhone app, but the PSP version adds a few more. I suppose Disney chose to go this route since they're both portable platforms, and they could get the same studio (Supervillain Studios) to do both games (in contrast, the console versions were done by the recently shut down Propaganda Games). The mini-games consist of Modern Lightcycles, Classic Lightcycles (90° turns only), Tanks, Recognizers (an on-rails shooter) and Disc Combat. Plus a "hacking" mini-puzzle-matching game. I'd take screenshots, but that's not built into the PSP. Also, good luck finding any screenshots of the game online. Even the developer's website has none, and Disney's official site barely mentions the PSP version. There's nary a review out there either, and this was a tie-in to a movie that had the full might of the Disney Marketing Machine behind it. They made games for it for every platform. The studio paid to have a PSP game made. That had to cost, what... three or four hundred bucks? And yet, there's hardly a mention of it anywhere. It's not a bad game, but it is an example of what's becoming increasingly typical of PSP ports, where you get either a watered-down version of its console-cousin, or a watered-up version of a cellphone game. Few PSP games anymore are really designed for the system it seems, and Tron: Evolution is basically a slightly-larger version of its iPhone sibling, for about 30 times the price. Disney apparently just rushed something together so they could make a few extra bucks off Tron completists and PSP gamers desperate for something to buy. For my money, I'd just rather have a larger PSP-like version for the iPhone, and pay $10 for it. There are far more iOS users out there than PSP users (160 million vs. 65 million), and it costs Disney zero to package, market and distribute an iPhone game. So they likely would have made more money doing that, than wasting development, manufacturing and distribution dollars on a PSP version. For the PSP version, it's pretty apparent there's zero support behind it. No marketing. No review copies. However many copies happen to get into the hands of whatever PSP gamers happen across it seems to be good enough for Disney. Toss the PSP users a bone, but don't fret that there's no real meat on it. The simple truth is, nobody really cares anymore. The PSP is dead. Actually... it's been effectively dead for years. But it's stone-cold dead now. I find it hard to believe Sony sold 65 million PSPs. Certainly its anemic retail presence belies those numbers. Good luck even finding the PSP section among video games in stores now. I've been in stores where it's smaller than the PS2 section. The PSP should have a pretty good-sized user base, but I don't think even they care anymore. I've owned a PSP for several years, and own about a dozen games for it. But with few exceptions, I rarely play it anymore. I've never even cracked open couple of games that were given to me. My favorite games for it were the two Burnout titles - the most recent of which came out in March 2007. Gran Turismo is also very good, but is severely hamstrung by the PSP's biggest drawback by far... It's lousy analog stub-stick-controller-thing. This thing makes every controller on every system ever look brilliant by comparison - the Intellivision disk, the 5200 joystick - no other major game system ever came with a controller this bad. Take the worst game controller you've ever used, and multiply its badness by 50. Then add 2. And you're about 1/4 of the way there. The PSP's analog-stub-thing is, for all intents and purposes, useless. There's no feel to it. There's no range of motion. It "grinds" against the PSP's housing. It absolutely ruins what otherwise might be perfectly good games. The best PSP games manage to effectively ignore it as a true analog controller, and just use it as a smaller d-pad. I gave up playing some games simply because the controls were so bad. Lego Star Wars? Unplayable. You can't precisely control where you're going, and will repeatedly fall to your death. The Recognizers in Tron: Evolution? Unplayable. You can't aim at all where you need to shoot. It's completely ridiculous. I suspect a lot of bad PSP ports that had been successful on other systems (such as Split Second or Mod Nation Racers) were due in no small part to how dreadfully awful the PSP's controller is. Either the gameplay suffered because of the controller, or the developers simply gave up trying, because they couldn't make the stupid thing work the way it should. Coupled with that, objects in PSP games are often ridiculously small, so playing the games becomes like performing brain surgery on a mouse with a blunt chainsaw. Left-handed. (Or right-handed, if you're a lefty.) So Tron: Evolution is likely to be my last PSP game. I've decided if I'm going to buy games like Gran Turismo, Mod Nation Racers, Lego Star Wars, or anything else that exists on larger consoles, I'd be better off just buying the big-boy version in the first place. The sacrifices made to squeeze games into the PSP more often than not aren't worth the portability of them. Besides, games written for the iPhone (and other smartphones) are approaching (if not exceeding) the quality and depth of what the PSP can do, and are designed specifically to work on those systems, rather than trying to shoehorn a console game into a half-baked portable console-wannabe with a horrible little analog-stick-torture-thing. An iPhone is also a fraction of the size and weight of a PSP, and iPhone games generally cost 99¢. The pricey ones are usually just a few dollars. How can Sony possibly hope to compete with that? Well, apparently, they're about to try. Again. With the PSP2. Yeah. Good luck with that. First of all, for dedicated gaming handhelds, Nintendo has the market sewn up. The DS is everywhere, and the 3DS (which I personally consider to be little more than the Virtual Boy Advance SP DSi - but whatever) is going to sell a gazillion systems, if for no other reason than because Nintendo already has the fan base for it. The novelty of 3D will get the Nintendo fanboys to line up and buy yet-another version of the Game Boy, despite the outrageous price. Second, the PSP is dead, remember? Nintendo replaces its handhelds while they're still popular. They didn't wait for their user base to get tired of the Game Boy/Game Boy Color/GBA/GBA SP/DS/DSi before putting out the next one. Out of sight, out of mind, right? If your PSP has been sitting, unused, on a shelf for months, how likely are you to buy the next one? Eleven months from now? Third, smartphones are filling the casual/portable gaming niche in a huge way. First, people are going to buy a phone anyway. So if they have the phone, they're likely to spend 99¢ once in awhile for games. That means they're going to be increasingly unlikely to fork over big bucks for another portable device to haul around with them, when they've already got a perfectly good game system with them all the time. Plus, they're really unlikely to want to start spending $30 or more per game, when most iPhone games cost 99¢, many are under $5, and the really, really expensive ones cost only $9.99 (and usually drop in price shortly after release). Fourth, the PSP2 is a behemoth. The original PSP was already huge, and now they're making this one even bigger? Yeah... it's portable-ish. But it's yet one more thing to haul around. I bet those dual analog sticks are going to help it slide right in and out of your pocket with ease, too. If you're looking for gaming on the go, this is a step backwards, like buying a CD player to replace your iPod. Who is it aimed at, really? Not kids. Kids have the DS. Not casual gamers. They have smartphones. Innovation seekers? They'll have the 3DS months before the PSP2 comes out. And while no price was announced, I can't see the PSP2 for selling less than $399, can you? And no mention was made of backwards-compatibility with existing PSP titles (no surprise there - even the PSP Go didn't bother with that). So... tell me, who's going to buy it? Hardcore gamers who are looking to take their PS3 experience on the road? And how big of a market exactly is that? If Sony actually decides to go ahead with this (and maybe they'll smarten-up by then and decide it's not worth it), the PSP2 will likely end up being nothing more than overpriced, underperforming, short-lived, soon-forgotten, unlamented, portable roadkill on the videogame niche market highway. Of life. And Gran Turismo will ship for it five years late.

... we could have been referring to the 2600 as "Giant Butte" all of these years, instead of "Stella".