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A new 7800 project... nothing major...

PCBs are designed, created, and already shipped headed my way as are a few components for me to populate the boards. I will go into more details once I have my PCBs and have been able to test and check out if my idea works the way I've planned or not. In the meantime, here is a pic of the PCB. If you are familiar with the UAV layout and install process needed for the 7800, then this should be obvious on what it is. While what you see here is rather large, in reality it is only about th

7800 Power woes... And it isn't because of the switch?

A 7800 I worked on over a week ago was sent to me for a 'No Power On' condition. There are many reasons for this and I have found over the years two main issues. First is simply a faulty power supply adapter. Given these things are nearly 40 years old it isn't unreasonable to think that the PSUs are nearing their end of life. In fact I've had another client send back their 7800 when it started to develop power on/off issues and found nothing wrong when they were sent back. Sure enough, it was du

Famicom Game Ranking

I'm making a blog entry for the Famicom games I own.  I'm going to start ranking them based on how much I play the games.  I can't go by like because I simply like all of them.  Alright, here we go! Salamander - pure and simple shooter with a unique story behind it and an awesome soundtrack. I also like the distinctive transparent blue cartridge. Route 16 Turbo - developed by Sun soft of Blaster Master fame this arcade style maze game is simply hard to put down once you start playin

More 2600 Technical Fun - Player 2 shoots constantly

Here is an issue that I've seen before in one form or another and I thought I would talk about it here while working on a earlier era 2600 heavy sixer last night. The system was sent in for refurbishment. In this case that is all the original electrolytic capacitors being replaced out, new DC power jack, new voltage regulator etc. But a problem was reported and confirmed during testing of the console. What was the issue? In this case it was an issue with the player 2 controls. Specifically,

Revisiting Gran Turismo 2 (PlayStation)

Today when I checked the mail there was a package in there containing a game I have not seen since the Y2K debate.  This is one PlayStation game I bought as soon as it hit store shelves along with a guide book.  Being a huge fan of the first Gran Turismo this was one game I was highly excited about.  So getting it in the mail was an exciting moment for me.  A game that has eluded me many times was now in my hands, complete and ready...no...begging to be played. I spent many months on this g

GOSUB for the Atari 7800 Review!

I want to start off by saying I love GOSUB on the 7800!  It was a fantastic experience, simple to pick up and a lot of fun to learn.  It's a solid play for an evening or afternoon, and it's a bit cheaper than other games I've purchased off of other websites.  I got it from 2600connection, but I couldn't find it listed anywhere on his Facebook or Website.  I had to send him an email and ask him if he had any left, PayPal him the money, and it came pretty quick.  It's hard to track down unless you

Atari 7800 Double Dragon Review!

When it came to reviewing Double Dragon for the 7800, I had to make a serious decision of what I'm doing here. Am I relaying my experience with a game and giving a grade based on that, or am I recommending games to my audience of probably 4 guys who already play and own the games I'm talking about. Okay well I guess I'm assuming these will each an audience of literally dozens one day. Think big, why not. Anyway, am I recommending games for you or relaying my personal experience? Because my grade

Salamander (Famicom)

When I first got into emulators I, like many others, discovered computers could play NES games.  I also discovered that some of the game ROMs I was looking at I never heard of before. When did the NES get Gradius II, what was Parodius? And what was Salamander?  I ended up getting what I thought were NES games I had never heard of. In hindsight, and unbeknown to my mind, I was getting Famicom games.  When I fired up Salamander I had no idea that I had unintentionally grabbed what we got (us USA g

My Atari 7800 Reviews Explained

I want to take an opportunity to add some basic information to my blog about how I grade games. I've been using a 10 point scale, but I feel that explaining the scale helps people understand my thoughts better. Other websites or reviewers might use a similar numeric grade but it means something different to them. So here's the scores and what they mean: 10 Perfection!  If a game or an element of a game gets this, than I found absolutely nothing to complain about. It's top tier for the 7800!

7800 Pro Gamer

7800 Pro Gamer in About Me

Venture for the Atari 7800 Review

Before I begin the review I will note that I posted this to the Atari IO 7800 forum first. I've essentially copied and paste it here so it doesn't follow the same formatting exactly as my other reviews. But I feel that it reflects my thoughts well and I don't want to rewrite it to say the same things. Also, I'm attempting to take my own screenshots instead of using Google image search.  I plan on going back and replacing all the other screenshots eventually. But since I play on real hardwar

Intro to Chinese Handhelds for Retro Gaming!

In between my reviews I want to do something a little different. When it comes to retro gaming today, we have more options than ever to play our favorite old school games. The ever present Raspberry Pi.  The "mini" consoles that was all the rage a few years back.  Emulators and roms on our computers or modded consoles.  But there's one way to play retro games that may be more convenient to most people than any of the prior mentions: Handhelds! With a handheld you aren't tethered to a televi

7800 Pro Gamer

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Atari 7800 Scrapyard Dog Review!

Scrapyard Dog for the Atari 7800 Prosystem Review! I've heard a lot of people complain about the momentum in Scrapyard Dog. They say that the character gains too much speed and runs head first into obstacles with little reaction time for the player. And while this is true, I really think these people don't give Scrapyard Dog a fair chance. It's a flawed game, but one that I really ended up enjoying! It could've never competed with the likes of Super Mario or even Sonic the Hedgehog when he

Silent Service (Atari 8-bits)

There was a time when buying a new game required using the packaging material to grab the consumer's attention. There usually was no limit to how far a software company would go to deliver a package that created an impulse buy. And by that I mean there was no other way around it...you simply had to have that game no matter what based on what the package looked like and how it presented the software inside the box.   Silent Service for the Atari 8-bit computer consoles was developed by

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in A8 Software

Crystal Quest Featuring Bentley Bear Review!

Crystal Quest Featuring Bentley Bear is a platforming game similar in feel and style to Adventure Island or Wonder Boy.  The Atari 7800 has desperately needed platformers in the vein of Super Mario Bros since 1986, and even with this glaring hole in the library, homebrew developers have been slow to fill it.  I don't blame anybody but Atari for the under representation of this genre, but it does feel a little odd that nothing was really released until 2014 to fill the gap.  So, does Crystal Ques

Famicom Impressions

It's been a year now since I bought my Famicom, Famicom Disk System, and a few games.  I just double checked my purchase history and I bought my Famicom, as JUNK, February 14th, 2021.  It took a week to get here which was impressive. And I'm probably not going to say anything about it people already know but I've got to speak my mind about it. My Famicom discovery really started when I discovered emulators a few decades ago.  I found a NES emulator and a ton of games.  What I didn't realize

Top 10 Favorite Consoles

I remember answering a question asking that if I was stranded on an island what game system would I wish was with me.  Or something like that.  I had some figuring to do as to what systems were my favorites and also had games I could play that I wouldn't get bored with or spend too much time on if power was limited.  I had a few other factors to consider as well such as power requirements and how it connected to a screen. All of that played an important role to my final decision. The overal

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Top Favorites

The curse of the Saturn horizontal lines!

This story starts a few years ago when I powered on my model 1 Sega Saturn and played a game for a bit and then powered the console off and back on to switch to a different game. But to my horror I discovered some strange horizontal white lines scrolling upwards on the screen? I powered the console off/on again and the lines were still there only now there were a lot more of them and they were scrolling much faster. Additional power off/on cycles would only cause the lines to change thickness an

CrossBow

CrossBow in Service Work Stories

Why wasn’t the Game Aquaventure Released?

Martin Goldberg is a veteran game industry developer, writer, archiver, and historian who is well known and respected in the Atari community. Marty’s articles can be found in many gaming publications, and he co-authored Atari Inc. Business is Fun, A Complete History of Atar Inc. in collaboration with Curt Vendel as part of their effort to preserve Atari history with their Atari Museum archive.   The period during which Aquaventure is thought to have been under development was one o

Atari XP News Feed

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The Aquaventure Mystery Solved?

Matt Reichert is the expert on Atari prototypes, and he maintains atariprotos.com, a website dedicated to documenting these unfinished and unreleased games. His thorough research and detailed game reviews are important to the Atari community, and impressive. I’ve explored several different possibilities on the identity of the programmer(s) of Aquaventure. Interviews with Gary Shannon and Tod Frye made it clear that they were both involved, while an analysis of the code indicated that Nic

Atari XP News Feed

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The Aquaventure Mystery Deepens

Matt Reichert is the expert on Atari prototypes, and he maintains atariprotos.com, a website dedicated to documenting these unfinished and unreleased games. His thorough research and detailed game reviews are important to the Atari community, and impressive. Matt took the time to share his research on the origins of Aquavanture, one of the three prototypes Atari XP is launching on cartridge. We know that Gary Shannon and Tod Frye each played a part in programming Aquaventure. There may h

Atari XP News Feed

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Aquaventure’s Pirate Links

In Aquaventure you play as a deep sea treasure hunter, desperate for one big score to make your name, and your fortune. Your crew believes it has discovered the shipwreck of the notorious pirate Calico Blue, and his lost treasure. We couldn’t find any reference to a real life Calico Blue, but there was a Calico Jack. Calico Jack was an English pirate captain named Jack Rackham who sailed in the Bahamas in the early 1700s. His nickname was apparently derived from the clothing he wore. Calico

Atari XP News Feed

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Why is the identity of developers behind early video games sometimes a mystery?

Matt Reichert is the expert on Atari prototypes, and he maintains atariprotos.com, a website dedicated to documenting these unfinished and unreleased games. His thorough research and detailed game reviews are important to the Atari community, and impressive. Gamers today are accustomed to long elaborate credit sequences, but what they may not know is that sharing the names of the individuals who created games was not the norm.  Until the mid 1980s, most games were only credited to the c

Atari XP News Feed

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