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Classic Gaming thoughts

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Real Life

Real Life - My mom passed last night

A quick note for my friends here.  My mom passed away last night after a long struggle with dementia.  She had a stroke earlier this week, and I had to make some very difficult choices.  She is at peace now.  Her children and grandchildren were all here to be with her.  We are sad but relieved.  I don't mean to bring anyone down or harm the io fun, but I know a lot of us are getting to the age where these real-life big things happen.  Sad, but the fun and distraction here helps.  My mo
RickR

RickR in Real Life

10
Trip blog

Disneyland in a Monsoon

We had made our plans months ago, figuring early Feb would be a nice time to go to Disneyland with less crowds and ride the new "Runaway Railway" ride.  As the date approached, we could see the weather forecast was getting worse and worse, with an "atmospheric river" approaching.  Bah!  We are Oregonians, rain is of no concern!  So my wife and I decided for forge ahead (full disclosure, I asked a couple of locals what they thought).  How was it?  Well.  Bad.  1.5" of rain on both days we we
RickR

RickR in Trip blog

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Trip blog

Day trip to Barlow Wayside Park

A quick blog entry just to share the beauty of Oregon.  My wife and I took a 40 minute drive in our new car to Sandy, OR, at the base of Mt. Hood to visit Barlow Wayside trail.  If you ever visit Oregon, expect very nice people and some spectacular natural areas.  This park has some very quiet, serene trails for a self-guided tour of a forest.  It looks like that third moon of Endor.  In any case, stop and enjoy the peace.  Breathe in the crisp, clean fall air.  Refreshing.  This one is consider
RickR

RickR in Trip blog

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Trip blog

Day Trip to Evergreen Air Museum

A quick trip on a beautiful Saturday to the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville Oregon.  It's about an hour drive from my home.  This museum is most famous for housing the giant WWII Howard Hughes "Spruce Goose".  I assure you, it is huge.  Also a picture of the author on Atari Day with an Atari shirt, relaxing in an old airline seat, a delicious lunch at a place that serves sandwiches on fresh-made bread, a sweet late 60's Ford Falcon I spotted in a parking lot, and our current sweet ride
RickR

RickR in Trip blog

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Collection

Memories Make Objects Valuable

The other day, I was cleaning out drawers upstairs, which were full of our kids' school stuff.  Old papers and art and various supplies and books..  Out came this purple box, which I assumed was a pencil box.  But when I opened it, nope!  It's a Nyko Gamoboy game case.  And that writing on it?  That's my wife's handwriting.  It all came flooding back to me like a sharp zoom!  My oldest child's first game system was a Gameboy Color.  We learned pretty quickly that if he took it to a fri
RickR

RickR in Collection

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Retro Gaming on PC

Retro PC Gaming - Hot Wheels Stunt Track Driver 2

A quickie game review by RickR.  I'm having some fun going through the old PC CD games I've kept over the years. Game:  Hot Wheels Stunt Track Driver 2 My Take: It's a very simple racing game with an interesting use of FMV technology.  The game uses FMV movies for the track footage with a 3D car rendered on top of that.  It works surprisingly well!  There are plenty of tracks.  But the game is meant more for kids and isn't very challenging.  I like the ability to do "stunts"
RickR

RickR in Retro Gaming on PC

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Retro Gaming on PC

Old DOS and CD-ROM Gaming, Part 3....

I had a blog entry a little while ago about the desire to set up a machine to run my old collection of DOS and CD-ROM games.  I successfully set up a Win 7 laptop, but hinted at something better.... Well, here we go.  It's a Gateway Profile 4 all-in-one with a built-in LCD screen.  Windows XP, Pentium 4 (single core), 1GB DDR memory, 40GB HD.  Built in speakers, modem, network, DVD drive, etc.  It needed a bit of repair, but I got it up and working. I tried DOOM and DOOM2 first, and they
RickR

RickR in Retro Gaming on PC

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Retro Gaming on PC

Retro Gaming on PC - The Gateway to Fun

As per my prior blog post, I'm attempting to re-enjoy all the old classic 90's PC games.  In that post, I mentioned using an old laptop running Windows 7.  Well as luck would have it, something special has been donated to me.  Check this thing out -- the Gateway Profile 4.  It's a complete all-in-one Windows XP machine with a built-in LCD monitor, 3.5" floppy drive, DVD drive, speakers, Pentium 4, and....that's about all I know at this point.  It may need a bit of repair.  My best guess is that
RickR

RickR in Retro Gaming on PC

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Retro Gaming on PC

Setting up a laptop for old DOS and CD-ROM Gaming

Another day, another hare-brained project. I've gotten the urge to play the multitude of old PC games from the 80's -> 00's.  Think Doom, Quake, King's Quest, etc.  I kept almost all of those games, especially if they were CD based.  What I've found is that they mostly don't work on a Windows 10 PC without some help from DOSBox or D-fend.  My idea was to set aside an old laptop exclusively for this purpose.  A friend gave me an old Dell laptop.  It's a 2010 model and has Windows 7 i
RickR

RickR in Retro Gaming on PC

4
Trip blog

Road Trip - Multnomah Falls

Q:  What is the most popular tourist attraction in the entire state of Oregon? A:  Amongst many natural wonders in the state, Multnomah Falls is the winner My wife and I left our home early this morning to beat the crowds and visit the falls.  It's about 50 miles east of Portland...about an hour away down the scenic Columbia River Gorge.  The Gorge was created in one of the last ice ages 10,000 years ago by the tremendous water flows of the Missoula floods.  The falls are 620 feet tall wi
RickR

RickR in Trip blog

1
Collection

A Vectrex Collection

My Vectrex collection!  I just got the Vectrex back from being refurbished (buzz-off kit installed, all caps replaced, general clean-up) and thought it would be a good time to document the whole collection.  The Vectrex is one of my all-time favorite parts of my collection.  I purchased this one in Feb 2013 from a chap over on AtariAge.  Over the years, I've added a few carts and overlays, and that sweet converted Genesis arcade stick (that turns-out was made by a guy I know!).  I'm now up
RickR

RickR in Collection

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Trip blog

Disneyland - Dec 2021

I had to pleasure of visiting Disneyland / California Adventure while visiting one of my kids.  I thought I'd share a few notes, especially on the newer rides. One thing to keep in mind when planning your visit is that you'll need to make reservations at the park of your choice in advance.  You don't just need a ticket, but also that reservation.  They are limiting how many guests are allowed in each day, and I think that's a really good thing.  Pre-planning is necessary. The "Marvel"
RickR

RickR in Trip blog

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Trip blog

RickR Trip Blog - Reno

This is a quick blog entry with just a few pictures from a short trip to Reno, NV.  I'm not a gambler, so I visited several museums in the area and had a great time.  Here are a few pics appropriate to this site from the National Automobile Museum (highly recommended if you like cars).  They had tons of cars, all drool-worthy.  But here are a few of the TV-based pieces they had.   
RickR

RickR in Trip blog

10
System Reviews

Using the Collectorvision Phoenix on an old CRT or Analog TV

More adventures with the Phoenix. One very minor issue that I've had with the Phoenix has been that my retro gaming is done on an old analog TV.  Since the Phoenix only has HDMI output (and my TV has no HDMI input), this was a problem. Off to ebay!  I found a very inexpensive (less than $10 shipped) HDMI -> AV converter and ordered one.  It has arrived, and I've been playing around with it.  Summary:  it works!  It's exactly what I needed.  No fuss.  Just plug it in, and it works stra
RickR

RickR in System Reviews

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System Reviews

The Collectorvision Phoenix

What is it? It's a modern rendition of the classic Colecovision.  It has a cartridge port and will play all of the original cartridge games.  In addition, it has an SD card slot and can run Colecovision ROM files.  It also has an Atari 2600 core to run Atari ROMs.  Real Colecovision controllers work with it, and it also has a Super Nintendo socket to use a SNES gamepad.  And it has HDMI output for use on modern TV's.  It comes with the "super game module" built in -- so you can use the latest
RickR

RickR in System Reviews

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The Many Faces of....Pac Man

I'm stealing the bit from Retrogaming Times. "The Many Faces of" was one of my favorite articles. Comparisons of the same game for various systems. Ordered from worst to first. Here are the various versions of Pac Man for classic systems. No homebrews or hacks allowed. These are the versions I've played...please let me know if I missed any.   Last Place: Atari 2600 - People like this version for nostalgia's sake...but it's not a good game. Main sins: Pac Man doesn't face up or down. No fruits.
RickR

RickR

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Behold -- The power of the "Scraptop"

A blog post for the cheap retro-gamer who likes to tinker....   I'd like to introduce the concept of the "Scraptop". It is essentially, a really old laptop, bought for a low price...souped up, and loaded with retro games (emulators) and tools.   Why? What's the point? Well, it all started with an Atari SIO2PC cable, which is a piece of hardware that allows any PC with a serial port to easily emulate an Atari 8-bit disk drive. The function of the cable is probably a good subject for another b
RickR

RickR

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Multi-cart Reviews - Commodore 64

It's been a while, but it's time yet again for a multi-cart review. This time, I'm reviewing the Retro-Link Multicart 64 for the Commodore 64.     Pros Menu driven - easy to use Instant load - no disk drive waiting Socketed - theoretically possible to change the EEPROM for a different set of games. Inexpensive Cons None. I love this thing. As you can tell by the summary above, I think this thing is pretty sweet. 63 different games and utilities all on one menu-driven
RickR

RickR

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Multi-cart Reviews - Atari 5200 (128 in 1)

Ah, the Atari 5200. It's basically the same hardware as the Atari 8-bit computers, repackaged as a gigantic, over-the-top, "Big is Better" gaming system. Consider it an Atari 400 with no keyboard, but with some very "interesting" controllers.   Love it or hate it, it's the perfect system to buy a multi-cart for. The original library is reasonably small -- easy to fit on a multi-cart. But what's really special here is the number of homebrews, and hacked 8-bit ROMS that really expand the library
RickR

RickR

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Multi-cart reviews - TI 99/4A

Hi everyone. How do you all feel about multi-carts?   My thoughts are that they are a really convenient way to enjoy your classic gaming consoles, and experience the games the best way -- on REAL hardware.   These things come in a variety of formats. The very best have an SD card slot that allow you to place the entire library of games on a single memory card, and then enjoy the games via a menu driven interface. Other types include a set/built-in group of games on a cartridge, games selecta
RickR

RickR

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