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Console & Computer Game Reviews

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Atari 5200 Thoughts

The Atari 5200 has been my all-time favorite console for a very long time.  However modern times have not been kind to it.  The machine itself is fine and I don’t mind the RF hook up it received but the controllers have a poor working ratio when not used often.  Which is weird considering most other systems can tolerate months without being used.  The Atari 5200 controllers, however, are a double edged sword. If you don’t use them once a week they fail, if you use them too often they can fail.  

To Mod or Not to Mod?

That is the question.  I received a NES Classic Mini which makes it the second one in my collection. It has a controller and that’s it.  No box or anything.  My other one remains little used and stays in its box with all original packaging material. I have been debating whether or not to mod the thing by adding more games to it.  I don’t know how many different ways there are to mod it, if it’s an easy process or more trouble than it’s worth.  But it would be nice to see the games I grew up

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Famicom

Jinks (Atari 7800)

OK.  Im new to Jinks.  I have read where many people have dogged it.  I have watched video reviews on it where it didn't do so good.  Granted it is not a typical 7800 game I'm use to.  From a technical standpoint it actually does some impressive feats.    I have to admit that I don't belong in those majorities.  On the contrary I find Jinks rather fun.  I did find a few flaws here and there like my ball disappearing all of a sudden or going through objects it shouldn't but the game is s

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari 7800

First Time Playing Crossbow

I have had this game called Crossbow in my collection for a while now.  It is for the XE computers.  Tonight, I played it for the first time.  Keep in mind that I have never played this game before let alone heard of it. How did I do?  I got 478,000 points.  I have no clue if that is good or bad because it doesn't take long to start racking up points in this game. Did I enjoy the game?  Oh yes!  I even played a second game but did not do as well.  I have yet to discover how to reach th

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in A8 Software

Atari 7800 Top Favorites

My first 7800 was received in the early 1990s...long after the company stopped making them.  What games I got with it was pretty much all I ended up with.  I admit I had mixed feelings about the system because I wanted to like it, I wanted to enjoy the games, but the controllers were keeping me from doing so.  Often times I forced myself to play it, enduring hand cramps for a couple of hours, just to play it.  The only game I found I liked using the joystick on was Ms. Pac-Man. That's it. So I p

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari 7800

Famicom Collecting

What started out as a small, innocent adventure has turned into a bit of an obsession.  Up until last year (2021) the thoughts of owning a Famicom system were a dream, an afterthought, a fantasy.  I had an opportunity to import a junk model last year, fix it up, and get a few games I was after.  The library of games I obtained hit a niche in me I had been missing from the good ol' NES years yet I didn't realize I was missing them.  And the visual appearance of the Famicom did not agree with me a

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Famicom

Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (Atari ST)

After all the life changes happening as of late I finally managed to sit down and play a video game on real hardware.  I decided to hook up my STe and the game I picked to play was Lotus Turbo Challenge.  Granted I have not seen this game since the Genesis days so it was nice to see it again.   The first thing I noticed were the graphics. To me they seemed to be better than those on the Genesis but on par with those IBM PCs equipped with EGA graphics adapters.  Those were the good ol'

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

Magneto Bugs (A8 Game)

Magneto Bugs is a one player, dot munching, maze game.  The objective of the game is to get as many of the white dots as possible while avoiding the bugs in the maze.  As you move you leave behind red dots that can attract the bugs.  This game is played with a joystick controller. I have spent my weekend trying out this game along with two others I picked up.  I kept coming back to this one.  While it might look like a Pac-Man clone it is far from that game.  The back of the package me

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in A8 Software

Star Raiders (360/PS3/Windows)

Oh man.  Where to start?  I reckon I should start at the beginning.  Star Raiders, as any Atari gamer would know, is the iconic first-person space action adventure game published by Atari in 1979 on their Atari 8-bit home computers and later porting it over to the 5200 and 2600 game consoles.  It is the game that defined that genre which others would follow.  Star Raiders II (the published one and the one that did not get released) took the basics and attempted to improve on them.  Solaris for t

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in XBOX 360

My Summer Decided

I believe I have my summer gaming all figured out.  I plan to participate heavily in the forum's Pizza Party with what games I do have PLUS it will be nice to revisit Zelda again...a game I have not played in decades. Just tonight Microsoft, for whatever reason, gave me a $5.00 gift card on my account.  I wondered what $5 could do and browse the 360 game store first to see if there was anything of interest there.  My nephew informed me of 360 games that were now free including Crackdown 2,

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Casual

The First Co-Op Video Game?

I probably know what you are thinking.  Let me try to guess.  It's probably the first online multiplayer video game.  It's most likely on a computer of some sort.  It was either on disc, disk, or placed in an obscure place making it hard for people to find.  Am I close?  To answer those: no, no, and no.  And this game might be closer than you realize. Long story short my nephew and I decided to play a game together.  The problem was that he wanted to play split a screen on XBOX.  I wanted t

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari 2600

Decision In The Desert (A8)

When it comes to Microprose games I immediately think of those 386 PC days when I spent countless hours on Railroad Tycoon, Covert Action, and Lightspeed.  I never knew that Microprose really started with the C64 and Atari computers making tons of WWII based simulation/strategy games that I missed.  So I started collecting just Microprose games for my XEGS.  Today I write about one of those games called Decision In The Desert. I'm not familiar with any of Microprose Commander Series games. 

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in A8 Software

Tempus

Tonight I thought I would research applications in attempts of finding anything to allow writing programs for the Atari ST.  I do enjoy writing small programs every now and then.  I turned to some magazines to see what turned up before having to turn to Google.  Doing a Google searched turned up a recommendation for an app called Tempus.  The only one I have on hand is version 1.10 but there are other versions out there. What grab my interest right off the bat were the file types it support

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

ST Virus (Not a Review)

I thought about making this just a standard forum post but decided instead to make it a blog post.  This way I have a document on my findings while learning more about the ST.  And now...the rest of the story (I miss Paul Harvey). I was doing research trying to find out if Konami actually went through with releasing some games on the ST computers.  One issue of ST Action mentioned it but the next issue that was to continue the story was missing.  My research turned up something more and I l

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

Bombjack (Atari ST Review)

Bombjack on the ST kind of reminds me of Bomberman Jack on the NES.  Whether they are one in the same or just share similar qualities I can't say but the arcade style game play is fun.  I was only able to accomplish a few rounds because, for me, the controls were wonky which I will get to in a minute. The graphics are arcade like as are the controls and sounds however the background music gets repetitive pretty quick.  Thankfully the developers were kind enough to give the player an option

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

F1 (Atari ST)

This review will be short because this is Vroom's younger brother.  If you haven't read it already I would suggest going and reading my review of Vroom, then come back here. F1 has new tracks and a few new menu items.  Missing is the lap timer.  It no longer tracks your lap times.  Tracks include Monaco, Spain, and many more that are part of the F1 World Championship...in 1993, making this an official FIA licensed game.  The animation is still as smooth as Vroom, sounds are the same, cars a

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

Hot Wheels (Atari ST Review)

When I saw the name Hot Wheels pop up in the tons of ST images I found I thought, "Cool!  Hot Wheels has a racing game on the ST".  So I thought I would try it out.  Then the title screen appeared. Not the Hot Wheels I was expecting but looks good at least.  I grabbed the controller and tried it out.  It's another top down racer and it doesn't look half bad but it is a bit jittery.  And it has tons of settings you can perform.  But don't take my word for it...see for yourself

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

Atari ST Conclusion (So Far)

I have tried many games.  Some with great success, some with not so great results.  Overall I have come to a conclusion on how I see the ST computers.  Close to the end of the ST production run I was heavy into the 386 computer scene.  Good old' MS-DOS commercial and shareware games kept my time occupied.  I never knew nor heard about Atari making ST computers at all.  Atari simply didn't exist. In hindsight that was a good thing.  I managed to learn the IBM PC side of computing.  Games I h

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

VROOM! Literally

While going through some ST game images I came across the words "Vroom".  No explanation. I have already seen some weird games on the ST so far so why not.  Couldn't be any worse than some I've tried so far, right?  In goes a blank disk, on it goes Vroom which I assumed was some sort of racing game with motorcycles.  Disk done and to the ST I go.  Insert disk, power on. Once I saw the title screen and heard the music my spidey senses started going off.  What did I just feed my ST?  Where di

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

Favorite Atari ST Games (So Far)

Let's cut out the introduction and get right to it.  Be advised that most of these picks are based on images I've transferred back to disks when possible. Bubble Ghost - a game I once played on GameBoy, this game involves guiding a bubble through single screen mazes filled with obstacles that can burst your bubble.  Pop the bubble and it's game over.  Very colorful and enjoyable.   Buggy Boy - The ST is the only system I've come across that has this simple little driving game.  C

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

Discovering The Atari ST

Long story short, I've had my Atari 1040 STe for a few years now but I've never had the urge to do anything with it. Over the last few days I've attempted to find something to spark my interest in it of which I have found a few things. Most of which are games but at least I found something. As a music machine it simply can't be beat in my opinion.  The native MIDI feature of the Atari ST line is very solid and I use Sweet 16, a program I'm very familiar with from the Windows 98 days. This m

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari ST

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

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

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

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

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