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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.

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.

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.

Seems to me I probably posted something about golf somewhere in this blog. Let me check... Ah yes. I mentioned getting an Atari golf hat, and made a couple of mentions of golf games for the Wii. Also, I mentioned I picked up Tiger Woods' golf for the iPhone. Here's the title screen... Today was the final round in the Masters golf tournament - Tiger's first tournament since he flushed his private life right down the toilet. And he didn't win. He played alternating holes of brilliant golf, and train-wreck golf. And at times, showed the maturity and composure of a three-year-old. (Apologies to any three-year-olds who are reading this. But seriously... reading at this level at only three? That's pretty good!) Of course, before the rest of the players had even finished, the media was already interviewing Tiger. And of course, despite coming in fourth place in one of the most difficult tournaments in professional golf, and walking home with $360,000 for four days' worth of playing a game, all he could talk about was how disappointed he was in how he played, and that he didn't win. Not how well others played. Not how he was glad to be back playing again. Not how grateful he was that his wife hadn't divorced his sorry self yet, and she let him out of the house to play golf. And not that he was grateful to be able to make more money losing than many people will ever see in their entire lives. Nope. Just about how bummed out he was, and he wasn't sure when he was going to come back and play again, because if he isn't sure he can win he won't even enter a tournament in the first place. Poor Tiger. And while I'll grant you that Tiger Woods may be the best golfer to ever play the game... can't the media please just shut up about him already? After the tournament, the big news was "When will Tiger play again?" "How will this affect Tiger's pursuit of Jack Nicklaus' record?" "Would Phil Mickelson have actually won if Tiger hadn't taken four months off?" "When will Tiger be able to move past his personal crisis and get back to being the player he used to be?" Excuse me... "Personal crisis?" Gimme a break! His personal crisis was that he got caught. I couldn't possibly care less about Tiger Woods' whiney, self-absorbed, poor-loser, sound-bites. I don't want to hear from him anymore. They should instead be focusing on Phil Mickelson's victory. The man is a class act. Very gracious. And he went through a genuine family crisis this year. His wife and mom both battled breast cancer. That's enough to make anyone an emotional wreck. At the Masters, Phil was playing for his family. This was never more clear than after winning, when he went to hug his wife, who was able to be with him at a tournament for the first time in months. The power and emotion of that moment showed that in the end, the most precious thing about the day was not the tournament, but that he was able to be there with his wife. That she was still there for him to be able to hold. And it seemed like he never wanted to let go. The rest of the tournament just fell away in that very private, yet very public moment. That's who Phil played for and won for. Not himself. Tiger should take notes.

Update: The domain info is now fixed! To be fair, the IT people where I work are desperately over-worked and under-staffed. Sure, it's annoying when something gets messed up, but they've been pretty good to me about fixing things when that happens. I didn't expect anything until next week, since they're off Fridays during the Summer months. So you can ignore most of the snarky comments in this entry... ____________ As part of where I work, I have free webspace for my CheepTech site. That's the good part. The bad part is, it's currently down, because they moved everything to a new server, and didn't put in the correct directory info for my domain name to point to. So once again, all of the images in my blog (and many that I've posted throughout AtariAge) are broken, because they all rely on CheepTech.com working properly. Which means I can't post what I wanted to tonight, since it had links to a page on my CheepTech site, plus a picture that I was going to upload to the site. But now you don't get to see it until the site's fixed. It was a super-cool, neat-o keen picture of something so incredible it would have blown your minds, too. Your lives would all have been better for having seen it. But no... now you have to wait until the problem gets fixed. So if you go through the entire weekend, depressed by the fact that you didn't get to bask in the awesomeness of this amazing, life-changing picture, well, don't blame me. Well, okay... it's probably not all that great. But maybe somebody would have liked it. It had buttons on it and everything. Besides all that, even though I can access the site directly by typing in the server name, the cgi scripts aren't working, so some pages (and frames) won't load. Something to do with permission problems on the new server is my guess. So that's something else that has to be fixed. One of these days, I need to go through and gut the entire site and re-design it. But for all you know right now... maybe I already did. In the meantime, here's a fill-in blog entry... ____________ I ordered some stuff from Best Electronics for the first time. They may have one of the ugliest websites in the world, but if you're looking for Atari-related stuff, they've got a ton of it. So I bought: The rev. 10 Best Catalog 1 embroidered Atari golf hat 2 Atari CX-40 Joystick Rebuild Kits (with upgraded handle and Best's "Gold" circuit board) On the plus side, all of it got here very fast. On the downside, I'm not thrilled with their minimum purchase requirement for PayPal, and the catalog didn't count towards my total, so I ended up having to pay a surcharge for being under the minimum. Plus, you have to buy a minimum of two joystick rebuild kits. That said, the catalog is a pretty amazing resource (spelling errors notwithstanding). There's a ton of stuff in it about Atari parts, trivia, history and tech tips. It's well worth the price, despite it not counting towards my PayPal total. It's too bad their website isn't nearly as well laid-out. The hat is very cool. The pictures don't quite do it justice. It's very high quality, and comfortably fits even my over-sized noggin. But my main reason for ordering were the joystick upgrade kits. I'd purchased some NOS Atari joystick repair kits from B&C Computervisions a few years ago, and they worked great. But recently, the dome switches on the circuit boards had begun to fail. Typical for 2600 'sticks. So I'd read about Best's kits, and decided to try them. These are modern-day, re-designed circuit boards, not Atari leftovers. And I have to say - I like them quite a lot. I installed one in my shortstick modded CX-40 and it worked great! The joystick response is especially solid, with each dome switch making a very satisfying "click". The best thing is that the responsiveness of the joystick is just as fast, if not faster, than before. The extra sturdiness built into the dome switches doesn't hurt the joystick at all. The louder clicking sound takes a little getting used to, but the joystick is much improved. The fire button though... that's a slightly different matter. The problem there isn't with the dome switch, but the extra thick plastic that covers the entire circuit board. While the plastic on the Atari board was as thin as very flimsy Scotch tape, the plastic on the Best circuit board is as thick as a two layers of heavy-duty plastic mailing tape. So what happens is, depending on your particular fire button (or even the spring that holds it up) you may have to press harder than normal to get it to make contact. The post in the center of the button doesn't protrude very far, so the rest of the button might bottom out on the plastic covering, before the switch gets fully pressed. I had one joystick spring that prevented any of several fire buttons I tried from working at all on the new circuit boards. Eventually, I found a spring and button combination that works perfectly on my modded joystick. On my other joystick though, you have to press a bit harder than normal to get contact. Hopefully, it will wear in after awhile. We'll see. The tolerances are just a bit too tight, so your mileage may vary. I think they should have either made the plastic covering a tiny bit thinner, or included a re-designed button with a slightly longer center post. At any rate, once I got it dialed in, the upgraded circuit board was worth getting. It has a very reassuring and responsive feel to it. Different from a standard Atari joystick, yet still familiar. Just better. I'd recommend getting one, if you've got an Atari joystick on its last leg. Or rather, I'd recommend getting two, since that's the minimum for a rebuild kit. (Three, if you're just buying the circuit board.) The joystick handles included with the kits also work very well, although I didn't actually need to get them, since it turned out the NOS kits I got a few years ago had the exact same handles.

I don't own an iPhone. I don't even own a cell phone. But I do recognize the iPhone as being a pretty cool device. Still, I didn't see any need for me to buy one, since I don't have much use for a cell phone. Nor do I need it as an iPod, since I already have one. And I don't need a mobile internet device, since I'm not usually very far from a computer anyway. And I own a PSP and GameBoy Advance, so why get an iPhone for a handful of games? Coming from that perspective, I was rather ho-hum about Apple releasing a Software Development Kit for it. Yay. More cell phone stuff I'll never have a use for. Then, I actually watched the QuickTime presentation about the SDK. The SDK is the killer app for the iPhone. I was taken aback at the potential that this opens up for the iPhone. The handful of apps they showed that were developed or ported over a couple of weeks were pretty amazing, and it will be really interesting to see what kind of apps come out over the course of the next six months or so. Apple's means of distributing the apps is very smart too, since it allows them the control they want, but still gets developers' apps into the hands of the users. (Of course, there will be the inevitable unauthorized apps that run on unlocked iPhones, but that's beside the point.) Apple has truly developed a mobile computing platform here, not just a cell phone with a few extra multimedia features. As impressed as I was with the iPhone originally, I underestimated it. I can see myself buying one this year, as I'm sure someone will come up with some application for it that I can't live without (despite the fact that I'm living just fine without it right now). Stella for the iPhone, anyone? Or maybe PhraseALator? The enterprise features also announced are really impressive, too. But given the sorry state of our IT department here, I'm unlikely to ever see any of those features implemented where I work. Still, as the software begins to start flowing, Apple is going to sell tons of iPhones. (Which makes me wonder... how many iPhones in a ton?*) Oh, and this is all going to work on the iPod Touch, too. Nice bonus there. Can a tablet Mac be very far away? I'm guessing the '08 WWDC. (*About 6000, as it turns out. So that's a pretty easy goal after all. )

When you start getting homebrew games, you just can't stop at one. So that's what sparked the idea behind my new avatar. My 2600 just can't get enough new games - it seems to be sitting there saying, "Feed me! Feed me!" As soon as I finish playing one game, it wants another one right away. (Of course, if you've gone without food for almost 20 years, you'd probably be a little grumpy, too.) Besides all of the homebrews it's recently been fed, it's now able to absolutely gorge itself, thanks to the Krokodile Cart. There are a lot of 2600 games I've played using an emulator (Stella) over the years, but there's still nothing quite like firing up a game on a real 2600. Recently I loaded up Mantra, Jitter and Flow - three excellent games by Simone Serra - and really got into them in a way I never did using Stella. Not sure why... maybe it's the controls (joystick vs. keyboard), maybe it's the screen size (a nice, big 27" TV vs. my iMac), but playing the real thing just has a "presence" that emulators lack. I've found this out with arcade games and MacMAME, too. I hope Mantra, Jitter and Flow can be released on a cart someday. Sure, I can play them on my Krokodile Cart, but these are the kinds of homebrew games that I'd love to see reach a wider audience. Hopefully that can happen, and if it does, I'll be sure to buy a copy. My 2600 is still hungry! Anyway, back to the avatar. I've wanted to change it for awhile (I got tired of looking at the same one all the time), but I didn't have an idea for it until I started feeding homebrew after homebrew into my 2600, and the idea just popped into my head. So I sketched it out in Painter: Created the line art in FreeHand: The nice thing about FreeHand (or Illustrator) is that the artwork is all vector-based. So I can infinitely scale up or down different elements without degradation. In this case, after I'd made a test avatar, I decided the text needed to be larger. Then I colored it in Photoshop: (Actually, since my 2600 is from Sears, it should look like this:) I didn't include too much detail, since it was going to get shrunk down to 120 x 120 pixels. Besides, it's a cartoon, and I just wanted to capture the essence of a 2600. I made it off-center to reinforce the idea that it's hopping around. One of these days though, I might actually try animating it hopping around. That might be kind of fun. (That is - the 2600 will be hopping around. Not me.)

After years of searching, I finally found the WarGames soundtrack on CD. While the soundtrack never did have an official, commercial release, a limited production run of promotional CDs was made, and I managed to locate one. A complete review of it is now up on my website - MacMAME.net - in the Reviews section. Enjoy!

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

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.

"Recognize" this? Remember wanting to play it? Well... go ahead! Space Paranoids is now online! And it even works on a Mac! Well... not my G5 iMac. It runs like a dog on that. But it runs great on newer Macs. (Not iPhones though. Maybe someday.) 42 Entertainment made the game last year for the Comic Con Flynn's Arcade event that kicked off Tron Legacy's viral marketing campaign, which is starting to get rather extensive. There have been clues left on various viral websites created for the film, and within Space Paranoids itself, which lead to even more websites and other clues. (Or "Clu"s?) I hadn't checked Flynn Lives in a few weeks, so I missed all of this until just the other day. There's a re-cap of some of the recent stuff on their front page, plus other stuff (like Encom e-mails) in their "forums". As for the game itself, they did a pretty-good job of adapting a few moments from a 28-year-old movie into a playable game. The controls are slightly wonky, since you aim the tank turret with your mouse, and move with arrow keys. Standard stuff for first-person shooters, but with the tank you can turn the turret in completely opposite directions from how you're moving, so it's easy to forget which way your tank is facing and get disoriented (hint: aim down so you can see your tank - the red circle with the arrow on it is the front of your tank). Gameplay-wise, you drive a tank around a maze and shoot Recognizers. Since they're higher than you, you can aim vertically and horizontally. (The arcade cabinet built for Comic Con used a track-ball to aim.) If the Recognizers catch up to you, they pin you down with a force field, and stomp on you - just like in the movie. You also have enemy tanks roaming around, although they don't fire at you (that I've seen so far), they just kill you if they touch you. And there's some fire-hydrant thing that shoots at you. Not sure what that is. The environment's graphics don't quite match those of the movie, and they've had to add a Bosconian/Rally-X type radar to show where your enemies and recharge stations are located, but it captures the feel of the arcade game from the movie, as much as you could expect from something glimpsed only briefly. You're limited to five shots before you have to recharge, so it's a trade-off between using your shots wisely, knowing when to run away to recharge, and how long it's safe to stay there while that's happening (it's not instantaneous, nor do you have infinite recharges). The recharging is a bit slow for my tastes, but everything else feels about right. It's actually a pretty fun and well-balanced game, and it would have been right at home in a classic arcade. It has a good early 80's look to it, although the graphics are a bit too polished for even a fictional game of the era (maybe halfway between what they came up with and I, Robot would have looked about right). Of course, they have to appease fans of Tron, and classic arcade gamers, and modern gamers as well, so it's an interesting set of challenges to be sure. I think they did a good job with it. Especially since I don't have to pump quarters into it to play the thing. Overall, it's a really cool idea for a movie tie-in, nicely filling in that missing piece of Tron gaming that we all wanted back when the movie came out. Well, that and light cycles. But there's always GLTron for that.

So, what I'd planned to post about yesterday, was that I've built my first CheepTech project in awhile... What is it? Well, it's an Asteroids controller for the 2600/7800 of course! Doesn't it live up to all of your wildest expectations? No? Not even the duct tape? Man... there's just no pleasing some people. If it looks familiar, then you've probably been bored enough to snoop around my CheepTech site and found this page. What I did, was gut out the old home-made switches, and put in proper arcade switches. I figured since I already had the box built, there wasn't any point in building another one (although at some point, I'll probably build something a little more aesthetically pleasing, and a bit more ergonomic). The reason I decided to do this, was because of the upcoming reviews I'm working on. In order to do Space Duel and Asteroids Deluxe justice, I felt a proper controller was in order. Besides that, I already had a box full of arcade parts from various unfinished CheepTech projects, so it didn't cost me anything. The controller is working great, so I also went and modified the other one that I had with new buttons as well, since at some point I'll need a second player to properly review Space Duel. If you want to make your own, I put some instructions up on the CheepTech site. It's one of the easiest projects you can build. The nice thing about these controllers, is that there are a lot of games you can use them with. Besides the ones already mentioned, there's also Thrust+, Gravitar, Suicide Mission, Track & Field, Decathlon, Space Invaders, Demon Attack, Megamania... pretty much any vertical shooter for that matter. It'll also work well (eventually) with Stellar Fortress and Rip Off, too. And... if you have a Stelladaptor, you can even use it with MAME.

I had the chance to play with a Wii at a friend's house this weekend. We played Wii Sports and Wii Play, and I was blown away by how fun some of the mini-games were. Sure, not all of them were to my liking, but there were enough keepers in there that the Wii has moved onto my "must have" list. The interactivity of the games is completely addictive. For example, Wii bowling really "feels" like bowling, except without having to put on the smelly rental shoes or trying to find a ball that fits your fingers. All of my bad bowling habits translate exactly into the game (I still hook the ball). It's a lot more fun that real bowling too - especially with multiple players standing in front of a TV, acting completely goofy. Wii tennis is another winner, although unlike bowling, I'm much better at Wii tennis than I ever was in real life (not that I played very much). I teamed up with my friend's son who's about six, and he did great! (No real surprise though - he's a natural at Lego Star Wars.) The games are instantly accessible, and people of all ages can play, and more importantly - play together. What made arcades great for me back-in-the-day weren't so much the games, but hanging out with my friends. The Wii recaptures that sense of fun and camaraderie in video games in a way that I haven't really felt, except on rare occasion, in nearly 25 years. I also played Wii golf, which was pretty cool, although the Wii remote is so sensitive, it seems it would take a lot of practice to be able to control the distance. Wii pool is nothing short of amazing. It's really just like playing pool, except my faulty cue technique doesn't get in the way of having fun. We played some of the other mini-games as well, and what struck me is the potential for really innovative gameplay. Also surprising is just how fine the tracking of the Wii remote actually is. There's a nice piece of technology at work there. It's no wonder Nintendo is cleaning Sony and Microsoft's clock. Once you play with the Wii awhile, it's completely addictive. It really does put you in the game. Plus, you can actually get some (gasp!) exercise! It seems the time has come to put down the gamepad and get up off the couch.

After some time away from it, I'm playing in the 2600 High Score Club again (not to be confused with the 2600 Mile High Club), and this week's game is Activision's Robot Tank. Not sure why I never bought this one back in the day. It's much better than Atari's 2600 version of Battlezone (yes... I know people disagree with me about that), since to me - it's closer to the arcade version of Battlezone. The tank is first-person perspective, instead of sitting above and behind it, and you're only dealing with one tank at a time. I never liked the changes Atari made to the 2600 version, but that's because Battlezone is my all-time favorite arcade game. Between the two 2600 games, the graphics are about a toss-up. Although the player's tank in Battlezone looks really nice, the enemy tanks are much better looking in Robot Tank. Plus all the time of day and weather changes in Robot Tank are very cool (although they can be a little annoying, since I got three snow storms in one game - where was I anyway, Alaska?). Anyway, if you're looking for a diversion, the High Score Club is a good one. Emulators are welcome, although I've been loading my games up on my Krokodile Cart and playing them on real hardware whenever possible. There used to be a MacMAME high score competition which I was a part of, but it died off due to a lack of updates, and subsequently, participation. I didn't see much point to joining the 2600 HSC at first, since so many weeks had already gone by, I figured I had no hope of climbing the ranks. But I found out that wasn't the point. The point was just enjoying the competition week-to-week (my favorite so far being Ice Hockey). Oddly enough, since few people play every week, I've found myself in the overall top-ten, just by being semi-consistent. And for me, that's more than good enough. So if you're looking for something to do, whether you dust off your real 2600, or just use Stella, c'mon and join in. And if there's a game you don't like some week - skip over it. There will be something the next week. So that's why my left thumb hurts. My right thumb hurts because I just got my PlayStation 2 hooked up to my new TV (component video!), and I'm playing Burnout: Dominator, the umpteenth game in the Burnout series. After Burnout: Revenge, this is a return to more of the frantic, warp-speed driving that was the hallmark of the series, that reached its peak in Burnout 3: Takedown. In Revenge, you were able to collide with cars going the same direction as you, and launch them as weapons against other racers. Lots of fun, to be sure, but it lead to some pretty careless driving. Now, with Dominator, I've got to unlearn all of those habits, since running into anything except other racers results in Instant Death™. Dominator is a bit of a step back in the series, and some of the cars (unlicensed knock-offs) are rather ugly, but as far as arcade racers go, it's a lot of fun. And I'm way too impatient right now to work my way through Gran Turismo 4 (especially since I never even finished GT3). If you haven't picked up any of the Burnout games, start with Burnout 3, and then Burnout: Revenge. Skip 1 & 2, since they're both dull as dirt. And wait for Dominator to hit the sales bin next year. It's a fun game, but not $40 fun. Oh, and back to my left thumb for a second (the 2600 thumb). If you haven't been following this thread in the homebrew forum, you should check it out. Lead is an excellent twitch-style shoot 'em up. Terrific fun, and another great game from Simone Serra (be sure to also check out the 1k version of Lead). Enough blogging for now. My thumb has stopped aching, so it's time to go smash-up some more cars. And pretty soon, I should have some blog updates on new 2600 sprites, homebrew reviews, and just maybe... Stella at 20. Stay tuned!

Well, who knew? With all of the games I've been getting through AtariAge, plus a few used ones I was given by a friend of mine, my collection of Atari 2600 games has reached nearly 200 unique titles (from the 131 I originally had, back-in-the-day). This is my 2600 Game List (36k PDF file - you'll need to zoom in to read it). It's sorted based on when I bought the games - as part of my original collection, or as a recent acquisition, with duplicates listed at the bottom. Actually, I don't have all of them yet. I've got another batch coming from AtariAge (indicated in the list with *) when Albert gets the chance to build and send them, but with those, I'll be at 198. Now, with even more homebrews planned for this year, that number will exceed 200 at some point. In the meantime, I've got a couple of purchases I'm looking to make... Boxes for Adventures of Tron and Tron Deadly Discs. I bought these originally in the package with the Tron joystick, but they didn't have individual boxes for the games, and I threw out (yeah... I'm an idiot) the original box for the joystick. But, I still have the 'stick, the games and the manuals, so I figured the next best thing would be to just get boxes for those two games. (I'm not really interested in hunting down the original box for the joystick.) Now... Atari2600.com has boxed copies of both Adventures of and Deadly Discs, either as complete-in-box, or shrink-wrapped new-in-box. Not sure which way to go there, nor even if that's a good price. The thing is though, I don't get out to the game expos, so that's likely my best bet for acquiring them (unless I can find them through the marketplace forums). I don't really consider myself a collector by any stretch of the imagination. But this is something that's bugged me since I bought those games almost 25 years ago. So I consider it tying up a loose end more than anything. Of course, that doesn't get me to 200, since I'm just adding duplicates to my collection, for the sake of the boxes. One game that would get me closer though, is Threshold. I'd like to get a complete-in-box version of that. I meant to, back-in-the-day, but bought Marauder instead (which I think is a pretty bad game). So that's another loose-end, but I'm not sure how I'd go about finding one of those. I managed to dig up various pieces for sale, but would rather just get the whole thing from one source. Getting a nice box will be tough, since the foil printing on Tigervision boxes wears out pretty badly. The 200th would be Crazy Climber (again, complete-in-box), but I'm not going to pay that kind of money. But this is another loose-end, since I had the AtariAge magazine, with the form all filled out, to buy Crazy Climber back-in-the-day. Not sure why I didn't. Probably didn't have the $26.95. If only I'd known... Although, it has occurred to me to possibly swap this thing for it. Anyway, the next thing I should probably do is put together a list of the games I have for other systems. Exactly why I should do this, is beyond me, but it seems to be the thing to do around here.

Some months ago, I posted an old drawing I'd done in high school of some sprites for a game I wanted to create. (Coming up with the rest of that game's description is still on my "to-do" list.) Actually, truth be told, I drew videogame stuff a lot in high school. Mostly in my notebooks. Probably when I should have been paying attention in class. This is the very concept behind a cool new game from Ambrosia Software: SketchFighter. (The notebook drawings, that is. Not the part about me not paying attention in class.) They took a very classic-style game, and created graphics for it that look like sketches out of a high school notebook. It's a very cool idea, and the game is a lot of fun, too! (Mac only... sorry PC'ers.) Ambrosia has a history of creating some awesome tributes to classic arcade games. If you haven't seen them before, check 'em out. Unfortunately, not all of them have been brought up to date for OS X, but there's still some really good stuff there. (Redline is awful, however.)

I really liked the way the 2600 I drew for my avatar turned out, so I decided to see what else I could do with it. Here are a couple of illustrations I did for an AtariAge flyer, which Albert is packing in with shipments from the AA store. They're black and white since, well, they get printed in black and white. Feel free to make up your own captions.